Comments by "Nicholas Conder" (@nicholasconder4703) on "TIKhistory"
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I hate to disagree with you TIK, but your example with the dominoes was completely erroneous. Minimum Wage is NOT, I repeat NOT, responsible for University students being unable to find jobs.
The real reason is that there is a glut of university educated people in the market. So, according to the rules of supply and demand, if there is an over-supply of a commodity in your warehouse, you don't buy that commodity because you have nowhere to put it. Since we are looking at the NUMBER of job openings in the market, the graduates don't get employed. Simple as that. Wages have NOTHING to do with it. Rather like filling a crate with bricks to capacity. Doesn't matter what you do, you cannot put more in the crate until a gap appears, or a new crate is built.
This whole business started back in the 1940s, and I agree that government is in part to blame, but so are the Universities. The issue is that at the start of the Cold War, the collective West realized that research and technology were going to be what would win the next war. So they started supporting the Universities in a major way to get more scientists and technicians for the military-industrial complex. The Universities made sure that they could teach all the new students, but then the Deans realized they were onto something, so they expanded the Universities. One need only look at the explosion of Universities and Colleges after WW2 to see this. However, the Deans also realized that they needed to make Universities even more attractive so they could gain more revenue, so they started creating degree programs like "Creative Writing" and "Business Administration" and "Librarian training" (yes, stupid as it seems, you need a Librarian degree to work in a Library or some bookstores nowadays). Simultaneously, there was a push in high schools to promote University as a place where you needed to go to get high-end employment. This was helped by businesses who started hiring people based on them having a University education (usually MBAs) rather than having the actual knowledge and expertise to do the job. By the 1960s the bitter fruits from this approach began to ripen and infect the modern economy. I have seen the results of this in action firsthand, by the way. So, Universities kept multiplying in number, expanding and graduating students irrespective of demand, to the point that by the late 1970s many jobs that really required University degrees were taken.
What has happened is that we now have University factories churning out graduates, and at some point, like a jogger on a motorized treadmill. The Universities expand, so they need to attract more students to pay for the new facilities, and they create new degree programs. They then expand again, wash, rinse, repeat. I suspect this education bubble will burst when the population of students who can enter University declines below a certain threshold. At that point the Universities will find themselves having to cut back, use the buildings on campus for other activities, or fold. Again because of the law of supply and demand, but this time because there will be a lack of new students.
I would also add that during this process Trade Schools and apprentice programs for the trades (carpentry, electrician, plumbing, etc.) were either underfunded or muscled aside. This has lead to the issue of many western economies having too many University graduates, who cannot find jobs, and a lack of tradesmen to work in construction. Employers are currently screaming for tradesmen.
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In a sense it was a bit of a "Catch 22" situation of his own, and the Yugoslavian government-in-exile's making. Mihailovic and the Yugoslavian government wanted to protect the civilians, so didn't fight. But to get arms, he needed to have active resistance, which would have resulted in civilian casualties. Had Mihailovic chosen to "bite the bullet" and accepted the civilian losses, he might have garnered the Allied support and weapons he needed, garnered civilian support (as happened in France) and may even have been able to build a stronger position with the other forces. Of course, this is all speculation, and as we saw when Yugoslavia disintegrated in 1991-1992 (as well as watching the TimeGhost episodes on Yugoslavia during the 1920s and 1930s), there are a lot of very strong ethnic feelings in the area. And very long memories. So, it is also possible that anything Mihailovic tried would have been doomed from the very start as, unlike the Communists under Tito, they didn't have a philosophical or ideological "glue" to get them all fighting for a common cause against a common enemy.
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I think the halt order probably needs Occam's Razor taken to it. I think it most likely that the halt order was given, like the halt order for Army Group Centre at Smolensk, because the panzers had outrun the infantry. Apart from Guderian and the other panzer enthusiasts, the bulk of the German commanders were concerned about Allied counterattacks (such as at Arras). They also needed to rest the troops and perform maintenance on the tanks after something like 8 days of intense fighting and charging over 200 km across the countryside. The German commanders were already looking at finishing off France, so they needed to get their units back into shape (rested, rearmed and resupplied) for the offensive towards Paris and all points south. Also, if the (possibly unsubstantiated) stories that some German soldiers had been given a mild form of methamphetamine, they would be coming off their "high" right around this point (since this would have been the first time the Wehrmacht tried it, they would only now be finding out the down side of combat drugs). Lastly, the German generals figured, much as the British High Command and Admiralty, that only around 30,000 troops could be evacuated out of Dunkirk, not the 338,000 that were eventually taken off the beaches. It is likely they considered this just a "mopping up operation", only to discover a couple of days later that they still had a major fight on their hands. In other words, they forgot the old adage that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Even so, the overall thesis that Hitler wanted to continue fighting Britain is not bad, but he could have done this even after annihilating the British Army at Dunkirk. As long as the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force existed, forcing a crossing of the Channel would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible. The Wehrmacht would not have put so much effort into waterproofing tanks and collecting barges for the invasion had they not been seriously planning to attack England (even though some of the planning was carried out in a sort of malaise). Even if it was a smokescreen, leaving the British with sizeable forces at their disposal would be asking for trouble. Would you really want someone snapping around your heels while you are planning an invasion the size and scope of Barbarossa?
Lastly, I think the thesis makes it seem like Hitler was trying to play chess 3-4 moves ahead of his opponents. Given the number of major blunders he made during the war, I find this quite unlikely. If he was that smart, why didn't he ensure his army has enough spares for all their equipment? Why did it take until 1943 for the Germans to start increasing production of tanks, aircraft and artillery? Why was there a chronic shortage of replacements at the front? Surely if you were gearing up for an attack on the Soviet Union you would have included this in your planning.
So, in summary, although it is an interesting thesis, I think the idea comes up a bit short. I do agree that there are dots here that should and do need to be connected, but I will have to disagree with how you have connected them.
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@whysoserious5925 I would disagree with calling Churchill a monster. Out of touch at times, yes. A man who was living in the previous century, yes. A man who made huge mistakes, yes. However, he could also be compassionate, and was able to recognize when his errors in judgement resulted in unnecessary hardships. It was Churchill who recognized the futility of trying to hold onto Ireland, and opposed allowing German officers being shot "just because". One needs to look at how cold-blooded the individual was, and the motive behind their actions. We may not agree with their actions, but there is a difference between being incapable of lending a hand, being misguided or oblivious to a crisis, and being a sociopath who is downright vindictive, vicious and cruel (Hitler and Stalin both fell into this category). Being the leader of a country often means making decisions that are further towards the black end of the spectrum than most people would like. However, motive is important. Why were these decisions made?
No leader during WW2 was an angel, they couldn't be. Anyone who tried was stomped into the dirt (see the Philippines, Norway and Iceland). I would disagree with you that WW2 was not a "good" war (well, let's say necessary), insofar as the alternative would have been rolling over and playing dead to a bunch of murderous nationalistic bullies who would have enslaved or brainwashed everyone they overran. If you watch things like TimeGhost's War on Humanity series, you will get a real feel for the horror that would have awaited everyone had the Allies not fought back. The Allies were not saints by any stretch of the imagination, but the world the Allied leaders wanted was a much better alternative to the enslavement of humanity under either Naziism or Communism. Which world would you prefer, what we have today (which although full of issues at least gives us the ability to change things), or a world dominated by kangaroo courts, people living in fear the Gestapo/NKVD/Kempeitai/black shirts, neighbours informing on the people next door to garner "brownie points" with the authorities, and mass deportations to concentration camps/gulags?
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Regarding the broad front versus narrow front approach, I too agree that the broad front strategy was, in the long run, the better approach. The narrow front envisioned by Montgomery would still have encountered supply problems and ground to a halt, and would have given a single location for the Germans to focus their counterattacks on. The broad front strategy, that we first used to end WW1, entailed not only stretching out the German forces, but making them guess as to where the next attack would hit (and therefore where they should place their reserves). In WW1 it worked well - I have read that about 1/3rd the German army spent 1918 running from offensive to offensive, but never having a chance to engage. I think Eisenhower was aiming for this strategy in 1944, but didn't have the logistical support to do it (not to mention Hodges getting 1st Army stuck in the Huertgen Forest for 4 months!). The strategy did finally pay off in 1945, when the Allies broke through on multiple fronts.
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At this point the Germans are very much in a Catch-22 situation. If they leave Stalingrad alone, it can act as a redoubt and focal point for offensive action by the Red Army. If the Germans take it, the city provides a strongpoint on their northern flank and supply hub for their army. At this point in the offensive, 6th Army's problem, and that of 4th Panzer Army, is trying to make bricks without straw. Their armies are heavily depleted in both men and material, and are having major supply issues to boot. The repeated attacks by the Red Army on the northern flank will continue to be a major drain on resources over the next 3 months as well. The real issue is that the Wehrmacht is over-extended, and it is really only the poor training and leadership of the Soviet forces at this time that is preventing a total collapse of the offensive. Indeed, even now, you can see signs of the cracks showing, as Paulus and Hoth are both frantically juggling their forces to counter Soviet attacks and marshal sufficient units to launch decisive attacks. It is something that Clausewitz warned about in his treatise on war, than one can easily surpass your limits because momentum allows you to continue an attack beyond the point where it should be halted. This is what we are seeing here at Stalingrad.
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One thing I would add to your comment about Soviet logistics compared to German logistics. Inefficiencies in the system and the stupidity of communist ideology aside, one point you make, perhaps without realizing it, is that for all their failings, the Soviet leadership put more effort into logistics than the Germans. There was (eventually) a rational system for logistics. And from Overy's book "Why the Allies Won" we see that immediately after the start of the war that the Soviets did take logistics seriously (even if, as suggested by your sources, in 1941 and 1942 they placed a lower priority on it). If they didn't take logistics seriously, why did Stalin ask for trucks, rather than tanks? I would suggest that the collective experience of Stalin and his generals during the Russian Revolution and subsequent Civil War showed them the importance of logistics.
I would like to suggest that you brought forth one reason for the poor state of Soviet logistics in 1941-1943, the lack of rail lines. By the winter of 1941-42, the Russians were reduced to few rail lines (in some cases single tracks) that could transport men and material to the frontline areas. This made their supply system inefficient. One source you quoted indicated that Soviet logistics improved during 1943 as the north-south rail system was recovered from the Germans, and rail traffic no longer had to go through Moscow. This not only shows why Moscow was so important to the Soviet war effort (it was perhaps the most important rail hub in the USSR), but also how badly they Germans had disrupted the Russian rail network. A single rail hub can handle only so much traffic, and back-and-forth traffic on a single track is very inefficient (one reason the Canadian Pacific Railway spent so much money on laying parallel tracks wherever possible). The capture and holding of Rzhev by the Wehrmacht in 1941 reduced the ability of the Soviet Union to move supplies around in bulk by rail, and is the reason the Germans fought so hard to keep it. Once this vital hub was retaken, Soviet frontline logistics probably became more efficient (going from a linear back and forth movement to a more efficient circulatory movement of rail traffic), and aided the Red Army's advance.
Obviously the USSR had way more oil and gas than Germany did, but it is still interesting that the Germans didn't try developing ways to get around the fuel issue, or focus more on rationalizing their logistical system (which you demonstrated in the last video as being a convoluted Gordian's Knot of conflicting fiefdoms). Instead, as you have indicated, they preferred to coerce client states for these resources or steal them instead. The fact that they started Barbarossa expecting to steal enough Soviet locomotives and rolling stock to solve their mass transportation issues is a prime example of the Wehrmachts poor logistical planning.
This is not to say that Soviet logistics was vastly superior than German logistics, rather the Soviet Union had a better appreciation of the problem and dedicated more time and effort to resolving the problems. And, unlike their German counterparts, they at least did a better job of it.
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@keithlane One needs to remember the line from the bible, "By their acts shall ye know them". Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan, Henry VIII, etc., could all be charming and speak in friendly terms with you. Until you got on their bad side, or were out of the public limelight and speaking in private. The fact that Irving writes books that paint a monster in a good light and, given all that we know Hitler was a monster who enjoyed watching generals who tried to kill him hung on meat hooks, says an awful lot about Irving. Remember, people like Ted Bundy are great people to be around, until they turn nasty.
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@blank557 Actually, the Allies did encircle large German Forces on three separate occasions and netted a fairly large to huge haul of Axis prisoners. It's just that Western Historians always seem to harp on about the failures, not the successes. The three major encirclements that are seldom, if ever, mentioned or touted are: Tunisia 1943 - 275,000 to 300,000 Axis POWs (100,000 Germans); Southern France 1944 - estimated at least German 100,000 POWs trapped between Patton's 3rd Army and Patch's 7th Army approaching from Marseilles (Operation Dragoon); and the Ruhr Pocket March 1945 - 317,000 German POWs. Even though people complain about Falaise, the Allies netted another 50,000 German POWs in that one as well. The pursuit after El Alamein has a few missed opportunities, partially because of weather (an abnormal rainfall forced vehicles to stay mostly on the single paved road) and partly because of poor operational handling of divisions by Corps commanders. They did try to catch Rommel on three separate occasions, but for various reasons couldn't close the jaws shut in time. Guess that's one reason they called him "The Desert Fox". On the flip side, there are numerous times the Germans didn't succeed in trapping large enemy forces either, such as Case Blau, Greece, Crete, Dunkirk. In the end, historians sometimes get a form of tunnel vision. Case in point, Napoleon. Everyone talks about his victories, but seldom mention the victories of other generals of the same era (Wellesley, Archduke Charles of Austria, von Blucher, etc.), all of whom scored major victories against Napoleon and his generals.
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I will agree from what I have watched that Pienaar's inaction in not truly defensible. However, his subsequent actions in later battles demonstrates that he was not acting out of cowardice. It is possible that early in the battle he may have felt that splitting the division into its separate brigades, all of which were fighting out of supporting distance, was a bad idea. Facing an armoured division with the force he had may have given him a lot of concern, and a "case of the jitters" (much like Major Schoettel at Tarawa). Later in the battle, following Totensonntag, he would probably have been extremely leery of following the orders of a high command that were obviously incompetent, didn't really know where the enemy was and were flailing around the battlefield. Since Pienaar died in 1942, we will never know his actual mindset or thoughts on the matter. However, from what I have read in Wikipedia about the period following Crusader until his death, he was a competent and well-loved commander. Perhaps, like Stonewall Jackson during the Peninsula campaign, he was having issues of some sort. After all, having bad days seemed to be the norm in this battle from Cunningham and Rommel down through the entire chain of command on both sides.
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@Félix Sánchez One should remember the vast majority of civilian deaths in Leningrad occurred during the first winter. Many civilians were evacuated afterwards. The problem for Leningrad is that from September 8, 1941 until January 27th, 1943 (when a land route was finally re-established), the only way to supply the city was across Lake Ladoga. Nothing could come from the Baltic, and there are no ports (as far as I can tell from the literature and Google Earth) on Lake Ladoga. The only way they could supply the city that first winter was via an ice road over Lake Ladoga, which was under constant shelling and air attack.There was cannibalism, yes, but people also did things like stripping wallpaper off and consuming the wallpaper paste! Salisbury (1969) "The 900 Days" is a fairly good source for a description of conditions during the siege, as is the episode 11 "Red Star" in "The World at War", the 1970s BBC production. The latter is something I highly recommend as a good initial starting point for learning about WW2. Of course, some of the material has been invalidated because of the opening of the Russian archives and proper perusal and analysis of the German archives, but it is still a great series.
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@360Nomad I am not arguing about scale, but rather the ferocity of these battles. The battles fought by the Marines in the Pacific are most definitely dwarfed by Sevastopol, Stalingrad, Leningrad, Rzhev, Kursk, and many others. I would argue, though, that for sheer brutality in a small area, the battles on the Pacific Islands were just as bad, and in a couple of cases lasted as long as, the worst fighting in Stalingrad.
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trainbomb If that's the case, why was he spouting off about stuff the workers weren't interested in? If he talked to the factory workers, he obviously didn't listen, or cherry picked what he heard if it agreed with his preconceived notions of revolution. The workers wanted improved working conditions, not a revolution. That's why they took part in protests, mostly peaceful. And had the Czar listened in 1905 as the British Government did, there wouldn't have been a Russian Revolution in 1917. Marx was an idiot! There is a very good reason why many role playing games have Intelligence and Wisdom as different stats - Marx was very smart (he had a Ph.D. after all), but not wise. If he had been wise, he would have realized that what he was promoting wouldn't work because unscrupulous and vicious individuals with little or no moral scruples would hijack any such movement. And history has shown us time and again, from the English Civil War through to the modern day that this is exactly what happens. Promoting social change is often a good thing, but it takes time. People like Marx don't want to put in the toil, sweat, tears and time it takes to push forward social change. Plus, you don't often get your name up in lights and be the centre of attention, which is something people like Marx want. It's not about social change, it's an ego trip.
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@adamjaquay4279 I think there are a couple of other reasons for the American High Commands negative views on Montgomery. First, I don't think they grasped the fact that, definitely by 1944, the British Army was pretty much on its last legs. In the winter of 1944-45 they were actually breaking up divisions to provide men to other frontline units. Second, Montgomery had a tendency to be somewhat condescending towards certain officers of equal or lower rank who he felt didn't "make the grade". This sort of attitude does not ingratiate one to fellow officers or allies. In some ways this tendency got even worse after the end of the war. Third, the British had tried to engage the Wehrmacht using blitzkrieg-style tactics, and had come off badly each time. Montgomery basically went back to an updated form of the 1918 playbook to win against the Germans. It was a more methodical approach, but also meant that one never got over-extended. The U.S. Army, on the other hand, had not tapped out their manpower reserves, and could afford to be more aggressive, following the doctrine they had worked out independently. Montgomery realised the American reliance on maneuver, hence his use of the British forces in Normandy as an anvil to the American forces hammer.
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I agree with you that TIK dislikes anything that smacks of Socialism. I think TIK does tend to ignore that some "socialist policies" are actually Christian in nature, "Love they neighbour as yourself" and "Do unto others as you would have done to you" (e.g., universal health care, old age pensions, support for the unemployed or impoverished).
However, he is right in saying that nationalizing (or socializing) industry is a BAD idea (as many countries have discovered to their chagrin). Industry needs to be regulated so the general public and environment do not get harmed by unscrupulous or indifferent owners, but not run by government. Same with agriculture. You sometimes need controls to prevent farmers over-producing their product and lowering the market value to the point they go can't make ends meet and go bankrupt. You then either end up with lower production of a commodity or, in the worst case, large corporations buying up the farms and putting small land holders out of work. This happened to an oyster fishery - there were two good years where there was a surfeit of natural oysters, so the bulk of the farmers went collecting the natural oysters. Guess what happened. The natural oyster population crashed after 2 years, leaving the oyster farmers not only without natural oysters, but without their oyster beds or oyster farming equipment (because they had neglected them). So the industry almost completely collapsed. Or you can get over-exploitation of the resource, and destroy your own industry (the Atlantic cod fishery is a good example of this). Regarding regular farming, I remember seeing an item on the US news where Wisconsin dairy farmers thought the Canadian Dairy Marketing Board was a good idea because it helped stabilize milk prices and prevented over-production and lost revenue that resulted in increasing the dairy farmers' debt.
So, it really depends on the degree with which these policies are implemented, the individuals who are trying to implement the policies, and the motives behind them. Like anything else, these things need to be researched, realistic goals or targets set, tried, analyzed, mistakes recognized, and the system modified until the kinks are ironed out. Some control is good, but like anything else, in excess, it can be downright toxic. Both the Nazis and Communists (even Britain under the Labor Government) showed us how badly the wheels fall off your economy and society when you try socializing everything.
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@JohnYoga When Roosevelt gave his pronouncement at the Yalta Conference in January 1943, the Soviet Union was still in dire straits. Although the 6th Army had been surrounded, it was by no means defeated. So, there was the possibility that Stalin might have tried using the potential collapse of the eastern front as leverage to get the Germans to the bargaining table. The Red Army did not know until after Kursk if could beat the Wehrmacht year round. Britain and the US probably has some inkling that Stalin might be serious about his negotiations, rather than just testing the waters. So, by telling the world that Britain and the United States were going to be in this for the long haul may, in part, have been sending the message to Stalin that the Western Allies were going to fight to the death to defeat Germany, and would never sign a separate peace. Stalin, astute politician that he was, may have seen this as a veiled dare. After all, if you claim to be the proponent of International Communism, and then "wimp out" when the going gets tough or it is convenient to do so, you stand a good chance of losing support for your form of government both at home and abroad.
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Apart from the Italians botched invasion of Greece in 1940, I think the other reason the Germans decided to invade and occupy Greece was because they remembered (although never admitted) how they lost WWI. The front that sealed the fate of the Central Powers in 1918 was the Salonika front. When the Allies broke out of Salonika the Bulgarian army collapsed, and Bulgaria surrendered shortly thereafter. Suddenly there was nothing to stop the Allied armies in the Balkans from marching straight to Constantinople, Vienna or even Berlin. As the scale of the catastrophe became apparent, first the Ottomans (with the British Army approaching Adrianople), then the Austro-Hungarians (on the verge of being pushed completely out of Serbia) surrendered. Germany, completely engaged and losing on the Western Front suddenly discovered it had a completely exposed southern flank with at least 4 Allied armies (French, Italian and Serbian) marching north at great speed. Indeed, by November 1918 the Allied armies were on the verge of liberating Belgrade, and Germany had nothing substantial to stop them. So, if any of the German General Staff in 1941 was not drinking the magic Kool-aid of the "stabbed in the back" myth, they would realize the danger posed by Yugoslavia and Greece from their defeat in WWI. So, I think the invasion or coercion of Greece was likely "in the cards" anyway. The British presence and Italian issues in Albania are just good casus belli, nothing more.
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The Colonel I would have to dispute this interpretation of the memorandum, based on what Hitler did in the 1920s (e.g. Beerhall putsch), Mein Kampf and his other book, as well as ramping up training of the Wehrmacht, concentration camps, etc. The Hossbach Memorandum is but one piece in a larger puzzle that, as a whole, shows that Hitler was planning aggressive war from the very start. From my perspective, it doesn't matter that Hitler was trying to do an end run around Schacht, what matters is the motive. Why was arms production so important? Why did he spend so much time talking about invading Austria and Czechoslovakia? As with many things like this, I look at patterns of behavior, not just individual pieces.
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@Michael-Archonaeus This issue arises because of a mis-translation from the Greek. The context in which the word was used in the original text is not "hate", but rather "put aside".
Luke 14:26 uses the term μισέω ("hate" in many, perhaps all, English translations) in a context that reasonably shows its usage to be something other than "an adversarial emotion we recognize as 'hate.'" That is, it is used in a relative sense there, where Christ is comparing the fact that one ought to "detest" father, mother, wife, child, brother, sister, and their own self if any of those get in the way of being his disciple (i.e. following Him). So no person, and no person's personal priorities, are to be placed above the priority of the Person of Christ and His priorities. Hence, it is used in a relative sense in this context.
So, in other words, we should "put aside" anything that leads us away from God and doing what is morally and ethically right.
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@donalhartman6235 One needs to consider several factors here, though. First, many of the British commanders had the unfortunate experience of impaling themselves on 88mm AT guns, which made them literally "gun shy". Second, the Germans occupied good defensive positions in the bocage, which restricted movement in places. Granted, the bocage was not as prevalent around Caen, but it was made up for by the fact the Germans occupied all the high ground south of the city. Not much fun organizing an attack in a fish bowl. Third, Montgomery was facing the cream of the German units and the bulk of their armour, so rapid breakthroughs in the face of these veteran troops were going to be tough regardless. Lastly, there were a number of occasions when divisional and corps commanders "dropped the ball", and didn't exploit situations when they could have. As an example, during Operation Goodwood, General Simonds, Canadian Corps commander, failed to take advantage of the fact that an SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment had moved out of the line, and so failed to exploit a breakthrough. In the Normandy campaign, Montgomery was using tactics based on superior firepower both the reduce his own casualties. The use of attritional tactics was not through choice, but out of necessity. I would also add you didn't level the same criticism at the Americans or the Russians, both of whom used similar tactics.
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snowy the snowman You do realize that the taxes on gas and diesel pay for the roads and bridges, do you? In fact, unlike the railroads, roads and highways in North America have been almost completely paid for by the government since Eisenhower (who saw Hitler's autobahns) created the interstates. It's one of the major reasons that railroads are constantly struggling to stay afloat - they cannot compete with an almost completely government subsidized transportation network. So, you want to be driving everywhere on heavily rutted dirt tracks and gravel roads? Using leaded gasoline with lower than 85.5 octane? While we are at it, taxes also pay for your water and sewer. Should every house in the towns and cities use septic fields? That would be a REAL mess.
The issue is not whether the State should interfere in supply and demand, but how much. It is a fine balancing act between regulating and ensuring essential services are maintained, or falling either into totalitarianism or a laissez-faire bullfighting arena-style economy. Both the latter options are bad: the first leads to Naziism and Communism, while the latter leads to an economy that is perpetually in boom-bust cycles because of human greed and lack of restraint. Put another way, at the unstable extremes are black and white, the issue is how light or dark a gray you need to balance your economy while providing the services you want or require.
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@HW-sw5gb I would say this is a yes and no answer. A debate is not likely to change the mind of either of the debaters. However, it does let third parties hear the arguments. Of course, as you point out, many people allow themselves to be swayed by the most charismatic or forceful presenter, which defeats the purpose of this. Unfortunately, even arguing a position using the written word has the same problem. Mao, Pol Pot and many other modern communists never heard Marx or Engels promoting Marxism, yet they adopted the philosophy primarily through reading books. The main issue, then, is the predilection of some people to adopt an idea or concept, then make it their personal dogma. Problem is, I don't know how you can get people to think critically and realize when something is a bunch of BS and when it is not. Sadly, it seems that developing a mania about a philosophy or idea and dogmatically defending and promoting it is part of human nature that gets hardwired into some people. One has only to look at Lift Raft above.
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@thewayfarer8849 I would probably have some rather interesting discussions with the two of you. I tend to be a liberal conservative myself - I want social programs to help the needy, but am concerned about fiscal responsibility. I also agree with you about Marx, someone who never really worked a day in his life talking about the conditions of the working man. It is doubly ironic that all the working conditions that caused Marx to write is treatise on "scientific economics" (which is neither scientific nor discusses economics sensibly) have almost all been addressed by democratic means, and Marxism had the exact opposite effect to what it was supposed to do.
I would suggest to your mother that the real problem not necessarily distribution of power, but rather the hoarding of wealth by individuals. We need the wealthy as they provide a source of seed money and investment to get enterprises off the ground. Indeed, it is unavoidable, since wealth is an incentive for people to attain, rather like a prize for winning a race. So, it is not a bad thing in and of itself. However, if the money is not invested wisely but rather hoarded or used for self-aggrandizement, it does no good and results in economic stagnation. This is something that has occurred time and again throughout history, and has caused the decline of many civilizations. Unfortunately, history is something that theorists always seem to ignore, the other being human nature (particularly the darker, nastier side).
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I think the issue with Marx is that he remained locked in his Revolutionist mindset, not seeing that improvements to working conditions and workers rights could come through political action rather than radicals overthrowing the government. None of the socialists at the time, and only a few later on, realized that the conditions they were trying to "liberate" people from were only temporary, and could be changed by reforms. Then again, I suspect that in their minds eye they dreamt of leading the revolutions and creating their idyllic world with fluffy pink clouds and flying unicorns. Tragically for all of us, they forgot one important factor, the dark side of human nature. Or, as I always like to put it, the cream rises to the top, but so does the scum.
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@dpollak59 In this I would disagree. One of Montgomery's problems was that many of the officers under his command had difficulties fighting their units. At El Alamein, for instance, the initial plan was for an armoured thrust through the German lines. However, Montgomery soon realized that his armored divisions were not up to the task, and changed his plan to having the infantry lead. Operation Supercharge was a master stroke of improvising a reserve to get a stalled attack moving. He out-generalled Rommel at Homs, baiting Rommel into taking an inferior defensive position east of Tripoli that could, and was, "bounced", enabling the 8th Army to enter Tripoli without a long battle of attrition in hilly terrain. And, you need to remember, he was in charge of the ENTIRE Normandy campaign from June 6 until September 1, 1944.
One further reason for him being downplayed as a good general is Montgomery's own habit of re-writing history. Had he been willing to admit to his improvisations (Operation Supercharge) and failures (such as Goodwood), history might have been kinder to him. Sadly, his ego never allowed this. In trying to make himself seem flawless and that everything went the way he had planned it, he instead opened himself up to ridicule. If TIK is correct that the real aim of Market-Garden (which may actually have been to seal the German 15th Army in Holland and destroy it, as well as capture both the Scheldt Estuary and Rotterdam), then this is a prime example of Montgomery making himself look like a sub-par general with no conception of logistics or operational warfare.
I am not trying to make Montgomery out to be the most incredible general who fought in WW2, but a general who has been given the short end of the stick by many.
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@drivewaynats3696 No, it didn't. If you look at what Overy says in his book "How the Allies Won", this kleptomanic way of getting weapons and equipment compounded the German logistics problem. Instead of having to supply a few different calibers of ammunition and spare parts for a few types of vehicles, the Germans ended up with trying to service almost 100 types of motor transport, each using different spare parts. Similarly, they had a variety of different ammunition types to ship to the front line for AT guns, tanks, artillery, etc., not all of them cross-compatible with different weapons. The British Army had less problem with this, but they still had to deal with supplying ammo for US and British tanks that used different caliber guns.
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One correction to your narrative that I think you should address. William L. Shirer was NOT a historian, he was a journalist. As such, although he was writing his books based on his experiences of the time, they were written without critical review. As such, any historian citing the sources should have checked the veracity of the statements, rather than accept them at face value. In this matter the fault lies more with the historians than Shirer, who probably didn't even look at, or fully understand, the nuances of Nazi economics. I would also point out that things like bank records would likely not have been available to Shirer, and so he would not have been able to confirm whether the transactions had taken place or not.
In addition, the biggest issue with defining Nazism as being either capitalist or socialist comes down to the fact that many historians looked at the veneer, and thought "If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it must be a duck". Many post-war historians saw a militaristic dictatorship that had a veneer of capitalism (wealthy bankers and what appeared to be privately owned companies) and ASSUMED that they were looking at a capitalistic system. It is only now, when people are looking for something else to write about regarding the 3rd Reich that historians are actually digging beneath the surface and uncovering the socialist aspects of Nazi Germany. So calling this all a "Socialist plot" is, in my opinion, going a bit too far. I would say this misconception is more the result of lack of access to critical archives and data, and laziness on the part of many post-war historians, who seemed to be willing to quote quotes of quoted material rather than put in the laborious work of going back to original sources and actually doing research!
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What TIK seems to acknowledge in passing, but really skirts around the issue, is that the rail system in Britain was asked to move people and materials in quantities it was not designed to do. It was designed to meet peacetime requirements, not wartime ones, so of course there will be inadequately sized train stations, issues with track repair and problems brought about by overloaded trains. The issue is how well they did with what they had, and how well they planned to have alternatives to, or handle deficiencies in, the system and equipment they were using. That is what military logistics is all about. And for that you need some centralization of control.
Using the reduced efficiency of passenger service is not a good metric for examining the logistics in this case. Civilian traffic was a very low priority. Unfortunately in Canada, it still is. The passenger rail service has to buy time on the CPR (for which freight is top priority), which means delays, poor maintenance and lousy service on many passenger lines. And this is privately run. So no, private control does not automatically mean great service.
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The Truth By this time of the war it was probably too late. One reason that Case Blau was planned and implemented (ignoring the Caucuses oil as the other primary reason) was that the defenses around the Leningrad and Moscow regions had been beefed up to the point that OKH didn't think they could easily break through the lines. This is supported, in part, by the 2-3 massive offensives the Red Army launched during 1942 in the Rzhev region. There is a very good video on this in the series "Soviet Storm" called "The Rzhev Meatgrinder" [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnhOTwSL5pI ]. This is a series of battles that have been completely ignored by both Soviet and German historians. During all three attacks the Wehrmacht barely clung to the region, the loss of which would have made their situation on the front near Moscow extremely perilous.
You make a very good point, though. Indeed, this was what Paulus had suggested in the spring of 1941 during the planning for Barbarossa. Again, the German High Command forgot about logistics. Had they followed Paulus' plan, their first objective would have been to attack and capture Leningrad. This would have given the Germans complete control of the Baltic, and all the ports into which they could ship supplies. It would have the added benefit of considerably shortening their supply lines. It would also have freed up both German and Finnish troops to put more pressure on the fronts north and east of Leningrad, plus capture the second largest city in Russia and denying both its population and industry to Russia (especially the Kirov Tank factory). Moscow could then be targeted using a pincer movement from south and west. The capture of Moscow would deny the USSR of the use of its factories, prevent the region being used as a communications hub, and prevent the area from being used to recruit soldiers. This could then have been used as a springboard to attack south along the Volga and completely cut off Soviet forces in the Ukraine. Granted, this would have left the Axis forces in the Ukraine understrength, but as long as they could keep the Red Army occupied they would have been doing their job.
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TIK, I think I know why those reinforcements were never sent to Stalingrad. I have been watching a made-for-TV series produced in Russian in 2011 called "Soviet Storm". In episode 6, "The Rzhev Meat Grinder", it talks about the Red Armies repeated attempts to retake Rzhev, which was a major rail hub for north-south and east-west rail traffic. It was a cornerstone of Army Group Centre's supply lines, and had to be held at all costs. Knowing this, the Red Army launched a major offensives in July and August 1942 that came close to capturing the Vyazma-Rzhev rail line. Model had to commit all the troops he had assembled for his own small offensive, and only barely prevented the collapse of the central front near Moscow. According to the TV series, neither side ever talked about this after the war, the Soviets because they lost huge numbers of men, the Germans because they lost ground and fought a pedestrian defensive battle that they almost lost (hence was not good for PR). During these summer offensives, the Germans suffered around 60,000 casualties, while the Red Army lost around 314,000 men. During Operation Mars, Army Group Centre lost a further 53,000 men, while the Red Army lost at least 216,000.
If you can dig up some more information about the battles around Rzhev, it might make for a great video. Also, I know you don't like Halder, but in a sense this does rehabilitate him somewhat for the failure at Stalingrad (though not completely). It also demonstrates how thinly stretched the Wehrmacht was in 1942 (robbing Peter to pay Paul), backing up Citino's claims that this is the year that Germany lost.
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@tunisiandom9318 You are incorrect. I don't know where you got your data from, but there were about 265,000 Axis troops in the pocket, not 600K. I think you are confusing the total number of Axis losses during the entire campaign (August 1942 to February 1943), which includes the 265K in the pocket.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad
Glantz and House's Stalingrad Trilogy
Meanwhile, the Axis losses in the Tunisian "pocket" were 275,000 troops, equal to the Axis losses at Stalingrad. For the entire campaign, admittedly lasting longer, total Axis losses totaled around 430-530,000 troops, again comparable to Stalingrad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_campaign
Oh, and don't forget the 275,000 Italians taken off the Axis roster in Ethiopia either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_African_campaign_(World_War_II)
So, no, I am not overestimating the Western and African fronts. By the way, these figures are supported by a lot of literature.
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I agree with your assessment that there wasn't, yet was, an evacuation. Based on what we know about him, I also think that the sociopath Stalin probably did forbid a mass evacuation of the city. Given the priorities of transporting war materials, foodstuffs and soldiers across the Volga (and via the railroads for as long as they operated), it made sense not to transport large numbers of civilians. Moving large numbers of civilians would reduce the amount of war-related materials you could ship (including food), and lead to issues of finding housing for the displaced population. It also made sense to evacuate key personnel or highly trained professionals. Evacuating small numbers of individuals would not have strained the transportation system or panicked the population (egads, now I'm thinking like Stalin!). However, one other factor comes into play here, that being the inability of people to sense danger or ignore perilous situations. Up until August 20th, it appeared that the Wehrmacht had been stalled at the Don, and would be unable to proceed much further. This sentiment was probably reinforced by Soviet propaganda and erroneous reporting of the facts. Army commanders and political commissars had a lot on their plate at this time, so in all likelihood they either did not have time to think about organizing an evacuation, or felt they might have the situation somewhat in hand. For the civilians, the quotes from residents talking about going for a picnic on Mamayev Kurgan or shopping at the market strikes an almost surreal note, especially if one considers the Germans were only 50 km from downtown Stalingrad. So, in summary, although the population was ordered to stay put, I think they also did not fully grasp the peril they were in.
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@michaels4255 Well, Hitler had to make concessions to the church because many Germans were Catholics, as were most Italians and many other allies. You wouldn't want to antagonize a large chunk of you population. Even so, some 10,000 nuns and priests were killed by the Nazis, and people like Niemuller (I know, a Lutheran, but nonetheless ...) were incarcerated. So his "affiliation" with the church was more political in nature, mollifying a large chunk of the citizens to prevent uprisings, than anything else.
This goes in the category of "Learn something new every day". I never know about the "tithe" on churchgoers in Germany. We don't do that in this country, and I'm not aware of any other nominally Christian countries this occurs in either. I wonder if it's a holdover from the Reformation. Thank you for this interesting fact.
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I have always wondered why Holocaust deniers cannot seem to believe the evidence. The only conclusions I can come to is that they blind themselves to the evidence, either because it is unpalatable or it contradicts their world view. I have encountered both versions of this denial, either from an anti-Semitic point of view, or incredulity that anything so horrific could be perpetrated by people. Sadly, the evidence is really overwhelming that this did occur. Indeed, my mother saw the results of the Holocaust first-hand when she visited Bergen-Belsen in June 1945. She even wrote a letter to our local newspaper in response to an article in that paper. She ended her letter to the editor with, "Yes, I shall not forget Belsen's indescribable stench of death, and the look of terror still remaining in the eyes of the sick survivors. I despair when I read of the people who attempt to deny the existence of the extermination camps. Will they continue to reject similar unpleasant truths because they are too unpalatable?" I would also suggest Time Ghost's War Against Humanity series, as they have researched and supply the actual numbers of individuals "liquidated" during the Einsatzgruppen operations in 1941 and 1942 from the SS records. It gives an idea of the scope of the Holocaust (and other similar acts by the Japanese and Russians). So far in the fall of 1942 they indicate that around two million people have already been killed, and this is before the death camps have really started operating. If you have not been watching this series, I highly recommend it.
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The real issue is not denying the holocaust, per se. As TIK says, "... but is that really the case?" Some people would never believe people could do something like the Holocaust, even when the facts are spelled out in mind numbing detail. For them the scale of the carnage is simply unfathomable. For some, it is just they cannot believe such a dark side of human nature exists. They deny it because they cannot face this reality that lurks inside each and every one of us (rather like the Maya experts in the -60s who thought the Maya were peaceful agricultural astrologers. Yeah, right!). Others deny it on racial or social political grounds, because it interferes with their beliefs or biases. It is when Holocaust Denial turns to racism and bigotry that it needs to be put a stop to. It was the racism and bigotry that lead to the Holocaust in the first place, not to mention the "ethnic cleansings" in Ruwanda, Bosnia, and many other countries.
By the way, I know the Holocaust occurred - my mother was part of a British Army unit that visited Belsen 2 weeks after it was liberated. She told me about the walking skeletons and mass graves that were still receiving bodies because the former prisoners were still dying from the after effects of starvation. So yes, it is OK to doubt, but I suggest you check the FACTS before denying something happened. You might be appalled at how animalistic some people can be (and I apologize here to the animals).
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@Grimenoughtomaketherobotcry I am not assuming as much unity between the US and the UK as you may suppose. They wanted to present a united front, but there were undercurrents present that most people were unaware of at the time. For one thing, Roosevelt's pronouncement at Casablanca caught Churchill off guard. I suspect it was discussed at the table, since Churchill grudgingly went along with it, but I suspect that the two leaders had something else in mind. Furthermore, I think one US agenda throughout the war was to end colonialism, whether through a naive belief this would make the world a better place (after all, they do say they want nations to have self determination), or a cynical means to break up closed markets, or both. There is a wonderful Nazi cartoon about Lend-Lease, showing a cheerful Roosevelt shearing the British Lion. Churchill, being of the Victoria and Edwardian mindset, obviously wanted to maintain the British Empire.
The permanent stationing of US troops in Europe was not an American war aim. Initially, some military force would have to remain in Germany to help rebuild infrastructure and re-establish rule of law. This is what happened in Japan as well. However, the permanent stationing of troops in Europe came about as a result of it becoming very clear in mid- to late 1945 that Stalin was not going to move his troops out of eastern Europe, and was set on establishing a bunch of puppet states put into place with sham elections and the backing of the Red Army. Although the British and American leaders probably suspected this would happen, having it unfold before their eyes was probably rather depressing. One need only look at the wars and crises that Stalin started before his death, the blockade of Berlin and the Korean War, to see his desire to expand communist rule everywhere. Look at Kruschev's "We will bury you" speech. All the treaties the Soviet Union signed, then broke. The crushing of the Hungarian Uprising and the Prague Spring. The invasion of Afghanistan. The placement of weapons on their space station in contravention of UN treaties. And the list goes on ... [by the way, this is not to say the Americans haven't a similarity long litany of extremely dubious activity in the Americas, Asia and elsewhere either].
The permanent basing of US troops in Europe came about because of need, not desire. It was done as a deterrent and to assist the western European countries in case of Soviet invasion, not as an occupation force. And given ex-KGB agent Putin's threats and apparent desire to re-establish the Soviet Union (or create the unwanted Pan-Slavic Union), sadly they are still needed there.
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TIK, I just about fell out of my chair at work laughing when Hyperborean Aryan wrote, "It is proven that we carry Ancestral memories in the blood which are passed down to us through our genetic code." Obviously this guy has no knowledge of biology whatsoever. First, there is absolutely NO scientific evidence AT ALL that ancestral memories are passed down through the genetic code. NONE, ZIP, ZERO! That is pure poppycock. But it gets better, as this guy obviously doesn't know that the bulk of cells in the blood, the red blood cells, LACK A NUCLEUS! They don't contain the DNA through which we inherit characteristics anyway. They contain mitochondrial DNA, sure, but not the genetic material that determines who we are. Maybe he thinks it is carried by the platelets because he is a bit of a clot! Although they, too, lack a nucleus.
Also, calling on the name of God when you deal in numerology, kabbalah and Vedic astrology is actually anti-God and anti-Christian. Unless you are worshipping Satan, that is.
I also get the feeling this guy must have watched "Iron Sky" too many times.
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Well, two things I would like to say. First, Germany always had plans to re-arm. von Seeckt and the German General Staff were secretly rearming and training the Wehrmacht during the 1920's and early 1930s in contravention of the Treaty of Versailles. They wanted another war to prove how great Germany was (also one of the reasons Germany went to war in 1914). Second, the Hossbach Memo is more of a rough outline for aggressive expansion rather than a discussion of what to do if Germany is attacked. Indeed, Hitler was upset about the results of Munich - he wanted war in 1938. And let's face it, the Czechs weren't planning an aggressive war against Germany, nor was Poland, or Yugoslavia, or Greece, or Belgium, or Holland, and the list goes on.
I do agree that Britain, France, Belgium and Holland (and even the US) had overseas empires. However, some people inside those countries were starting to seriously talk about the cost of empire, and seeking to divest themselves of their empires. Britain had already given independence to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa by this time. So these countries were finally, and extremely slowly, starting to realize that imperial conquest was wrong. Japan, Italy and Germany did not have those developing scruples, which is one reason they were condemned for their actions. However, it should never be forgotten that the primary reason they are vilified is their excessive barbarism towards everyone nation and people they fought or occupied.
Finally, these three nations attempted to create empires at a time when people's views on self-determination were changing. I do agree (and have often thought) that in any era prior to the mid-1900s their actions would have been taken in stride. However, their brutality and avarice during an age of mass communication turned the entire world against them.
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Thinking back on this conference, I suddenly realized that this meeting was probably the turning point of the Stalingrad campaign, in a sense. When Hitler asks Halder to send 3 divisions to Stalingrad to reinforce 6th Army, and Halder looks startled, should have been a warning sign that things were not good. Yet at no point do either Halder, von Weichs or Paulus suggest to Hitler that they might want to consider shortening their lines or pulling back because they are overextended. It is at this point, just before the Germans enter the city proper, that the wheels really fall off the cart. All four of them must share equal blame, because NONE of them have considered the fact that there are no more reserves, and even if they take the city, they won't have the troops to exploit their success.
Because of the inability of these four individuals to recognize and state how tenuous the situation really is, I think you could make a good case that this is when the Wehrmacht ensnared itself in an untenable situation, and laid itself open to future events.
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@tamje1751 I'm not disagreeing with you, I am just commenting on the fact that none of them seemed to realize that if they didn't have reserve divisions to throw into the line, they were in deep doo doo. Rather like the French in 1940.
I guess this comes down to the fact that the Germans, like the Japanese, front-loaded their offensives. As Citino points out, the Germans tended to hurl everything into battle and hold nothing back. As a result, if their opponent could hold out against the initial assault, neither the Japanese nor the Germans could maintain the pressure and their attacks failed. This will be seen at Kursk, the Ardennes and Alsace-Lorraine (Operation Nordwind) for the Germans; Buna, Guadalcanal, Arakan and Kohima/Imphal for the Japanese.
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Megalomania is a form of madness, so in this respect Hitler was insane. That does not mean that he was completely irrational, as he had a reasonable grasp of economics and the deficiencies that Germany suffered from. However, his overall thinking and philosophy was flawed, as was that of Stalin, Napoleon, Louis XIV, and many others who suffered from megalomania. The fact that so many "rational" people like Halder and von Papen followed Hitler or allowed him to have power shows that he was not raving mad (like the Joker), at least until late 1944. And many of these same people later tried to disavow their actions and use Hitler as a scapegoat. Which begs the question, if, as they say, they knowingly followed someone they thought (ex post facto) was insane, what does that say about their level of sanity?
By the fall of 1944 Hitler was believing his own propaganda, and starting to ignore reality to live in his own world. It was around this time that he probably could be called "mad". Then again, this is something that has happened to many dictators or wannabe dictators who are in the process of losing. It is likely we all have minor versions of this wired into us. How many times when a picnic is planned and it turns into a rainy day do we keep looking for the weather to clear, getting elated at every lighter patch of sky appears? Or how many gamblers keep betting on the next hand hoping for a big win? It doesn't make you insane, per se. It is only when carried to the extreme, when you cannot accept reality at all, that it could be called a form of insanity. But, it must be remembered, this took place long after the events for which Hitler's sanity is initially called into question.
With regards to the drug us, I don't think Hitler really began using the cocktail of medications until later in the war, after the war was already lost. So again, people like Halder can't really use this as a defense to say why they lost the war.
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@kenhoganson9481 I would still think he was a megalomaniac. One must remember that Hitler was trying to impose his will by force and coercion. He was not interested in anyone else's position if it was contradictory to his. One need only look at his vision for the new Berlin (Germania) and images he had made of himself as a crusading paladin to see his desire to be an emperor. And the fact that at the very end he ordered Speer and the Army commanders to destroy all industrial infrastructure in Germany when it was obvious that the war is lost speaks of a child with the mindset that, if they can't have it, nobody will. In his final testament, he said, “Everyone has lied to me, everyone has deceived me, no one has told me the truth. The armed forces have lied to me and now the SS has left me in the lurch. The German people have not fought heroically. It deserves to perish,” ... It is not I who have lost the war, but the German people". Given all of this, I would say he was megalomaniacal.
I believe others have commented that Hitler's delegation of power was more a cynical attempt to divide and conquer elements within the Nazi party that could oppose him than trusting others. By creating conflicting organizations and interests within his administration, he ensured that everyone was too busy fighting everyone else for dominance to form any sort of opposition to his position as Fuhrer. It also fit with his pseudo-Darwinian concept of "survival of the fittest".
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@bigwoody4704 You never lived in the Philippines like I did. MacArthur keeping his promise to return is still remembered there. His offensive through New Guinea was extremely well run after the Buna campaign, and at times showed great imagination. Also, the job he did both writing the Japanese Constitution and helping Japan get back on its feet while suppressing Communist influence is nothing to sneeze at either.
Like any commander, he was human and made mistakes, like the one that caused Truman to finally fire him. This issue of December 8th is a bit of a mystery. It is possible he had trouble deciding how to act because he was unsure of the accuracy of the information he received. He was also in an awkward position both as leader of the US forces in the Philippines, but also as military advisor to the nascent Philippine government (who were to become completely independent of the US in 1946). Whether this affected his judgement (like deciding not to strike the first blow from a quasi independent state) we'll never know. Like many generals in his position, he had a huge ego (but then again, this is sometimes needed to make the decisions these people make). He was, however, very bad at selecting subordinates, having the nasty tendency to choose "yes men".
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@bigwoody4704 Actually, the Japanese were completely shocked that MacArthur actually landed on the beaches on the first day. They couldn't believe it. It was MacArthur who insisted on landing in the Philippines. Nimitz wanted to land on Taiwan. After the war, when he looked at what his troops would have to face, he agreed that MacArthur was right. MacArthur also realized that the Philippine landings would be good political PR for the US (we live up to our agreements, "I shall return"), and would be supported by Filipino guerillas, so a win-win situation. I agree that MacArthur had two great subordinates, Krueger and Eichelberger, but as I have said before, "the buck stops here". MacArthur was in overall command and approved plans that his staff came up with (or developed from his ideas). An army is a team, and must function properly from top to bottom to win. If MacArthur was a bumbling boob, his army would not have performed as well as it did.
With regards to him skeedaddling, you need to re-read the battle in the Philippines from December 1941 to May 1942. Roosevelt ORDERED MacArthur to leave, overruling his protests that he would stay and go down fighting with his troops. MacArthur initially refused to obey Roosevelt's order, but was forced to obey. A guy who stands out in the open at the entrance of the Malinta Tunnel and watches the Japanese planes bombing Corregidor (where the Malinta Tunnel is located - I've been there) is not the kind of person who will run when the going gets tough. In this he was like Patton, personally brave to the point of recklessness. But, I also agree with the ego bit. I think I mentioned Eisenhower's quote about MacArthur in a previous post, and it pretty describes MacArthur's posturing.
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@bigwoody4704 There were many who would agree with you that MacArthur should have gotten the axe. Given what appears in most histories, I would also agree that he should have given the boot, with caveats. The biggest problem is that many records from this crucial period are missing, and few of the participants really talked about what happened on the morning of December 8, 1941, in Manila. It would be interesting to look into the archives to see if there were extenuating circumstances. It is important to remember that the Philippines were a protectorate on their way to full independence from the US at the time, and MacArthur's job had been primarily as a military advisor to the President of the Philippines. It is possible there were some communications or agreements made between Quezon and MacArthur that he would not use what could be technically neutral soil as a launching pad for an attack. He may have been under direct orders from Roosevelt and/or Quezon to not provoke the Japanese. Then again, it may just be he completely dropped the ball and Roosevelt figured he couldn't give the Japanese the propaganda value of capturing a high level US General. We may never know.
By the way, this does not absolve him for the lack of preparation of the US and Filipino ground forces in December 1941, or shoddy planning during the retreat which left over 3 months of food in warehouses that could have kept the troops in Bataan and Corregidor healthier and more able to counter Japanese attacks. So, as I mention above, I agree he made some truly horrendous mistakes right up until the end of the Buna Campaign in February 1943. After that, he and his staff got their collective acts together, showing great imagination and drive in pushing the Japanese completely out of the region and starting the final drives to liberate the Philippines in early 1945.
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One issue I had with TIK discussing moving the units around to maximize the forces entering the city is that he did not provide a map showing where these units were all located. One may say, "why didn't they just move X to Y", but it may not necessarily be that easy (i.e., he could have just moved the units, but is this really the case?). Grabbing three divisions and moving them into position is not an easy task. It is one reason why Montgomery gets praise for shifting 3rd Division 30 miles at night to plug the gap left by the Belgium capitulation during the retreat to Dunkirk. It is also why Patton gets praise for shifting a corps to hit the German southern flank during the Battle of the Bulge. It is no easy task to shift troops out of the lines and replace them with other units on the fly. Time is also important, as it takes time to do this, but the longer one delays, the more time the enemy has to entrench and fortify their position. Sometimes you have to make do with what you have on hand. In addition, over the two days Paulus had to act on this, he was concerned with:
1) watching the developing situation with the Italian Army towards his rear,
2) fending off Soviet counterattacks,
3) trying to figure out how to rescue the troops in the pocket near Stalingrad,
4) keeping up the pressure so the Soviets could not organize a successful counterattack,
5) planning how to link up with Hoth's 4th Panzer Army to encircle and destroy Soviet forces outside the city,
6) organizing an assault force to take the city.
This is a lot on your plate. Add in trying to move whole divisions around and it is a recipe for disaster (eg., General Rosecrans at Chickamauga). Best analogy I can think of for Paulus' problems at this time is juggling a set of balls in the air with one foot on a pier, the other in a rowboat, and someone forgot to tie the boat to the pier!
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@juliantheapostate8295 However, this "democracy" is more like that practiced in communist regimes like, oh, I don't know, perhaps North Korea? You know, you can vote for one of the candidates on the ballot, Communist Party Member #1, Communist Party Member #2, or Communist Party Member #3. Oh, and anyone who isn't a member of the Communist Party is a bourgeoisie counter-revolutionary and in the gulag or shot. To put it another way, like Henry Ford once said, you can have any colour of car you want as long as it is black. This is NOT a choice, rather Orwellian 1984 rhetoric.
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Given the time it would have taken to organize a withdrawal, get the men on the vehicles or out of their front-line positions and through the gap, you are probably looking at a couple of days of organization. In reality, to have had any success whatsoever, it is likely that 6th Army would probably have needed to start planning and executing their withdrawal from the city on the day of the initial attack (Nov. 19th). Starting at this time may, repeat may, have given Paulus a chance to move blocking units into position to stall the Soviet attack. By the next day, the 20th, the situation was possibly salvageable, but by the 21st the defenses had disintegrated to the point that it was unrecoverable. Basically, Paulus needed to act as soon as the offensive started, but given the failure of the previous Soviet attacks and poor communications, he didn't get a full idea how bad things were in a timely manner. The real fault for this debacle lies with OKH and OKW, who didn't provide sufficient reserve troops to defend against penetration of the front lines.
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I would say a couple of things here.
First, I think your analogy is a bit off. It would be more like a football league that decides to change the rules and allow the use of underarm forward passes in the game. No coach or team raises a complaint when this motion is passed. During the playoffs, both teams use this technique due to adverse field conditions making some regular throws difficult. No complaints are lodged by either team. During the finals both teams use the underarm forward pass, but the winning team uses it more often. There are no formal complaints lodged with the league before, during or immediately after the final game. It is not until one or more weeks later that the losing team lodges a complaint that the new method of passing the football is against the rules of the game, mainly because they feel they would have won the championship without the other team using the forward underarm pass.
Second, would the people who submitted this document to the Pennsylvania State Court have lodged a similar complaint had the Republicans won the election by a narrow margin? What would the reactions have been if the Democrats had lodged the same complaint with similar timing about Section 77 following a defeat at the polls? Would Republicans have backed the Democrats in their bid to disallow these mail-in votes because Section 77 should not be considered constitutional? It would, of course, mean invalidating all the mail-in Republican ballots as well, which might threaten the Republican win. If the claim was legitimate, I would like to say yes. However, if this theoretical scenario played out, my suspicion is that most Republicans would defend Section 77 to the hilt as legal and just, and complain that the Democrats were trying to steal the election.
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Something that I should have mentioned before - NO construction job or activity EVER counts every screw, nut, bolt, piece of plywood, etc., required to do a job. You always buy in units, in bulk. Supplies purchased for every piece of work done on my house has been done this way. It is the same with supplying front line units. Logistics staffs figure out the daily consumption rates and then order units of supply accordingly (5,000 boxes of bullets containing x number of rounds each, 5,000 gallons of fuel, 15,000 rations, etc.). This is why you often see tonnage required per division as an indicator of logistics, and why supplies are usually listed as units, not physical numbers. However, no matter how you slice it, the German Armies were constantly running out of fuel, running low on ammo, lacking spare parts to fix equipment. This shows conclusively that their logistics, and the planning to continuously supply their offensives, quite frankly sucked!
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@sydhendrix4853 Well, if you are talking about Pearl Harbour, Nagumo didn't know where the American carriers were, so he was concerned about an ambush. He basically had the entire Japanese strike force present, and losing it at the start of the conflict would have been disastrous. Also, the Japanese had limited fuel for their ships. Based on some material I have read they were actually operating 2 carriers and several other vessels beyond their normal range cruising ranges, so time was of the essence (they had packed the ships to the gunnels with oil drums to make the trip). Also, The Japanese never considered fuel tanks and repair facilities to be "honorable targets", so why lose more precious airmen attacking a fully alerted target.
At Midway, Nagumo showed he was aggressive (Shattered Sword is a good reference for this), in fact too aggressive. His decision to not pull back about 30-50 nautical miles after they discovered the US carriers, and actually trying to close the distance with Hiryu after the 10:25 strike, demonstrates a rather reckless aggressive approach to the battle. Then again, he was following Japanese naval tradition.
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Even if one were to take the short-term view, because of the genetic intermixing of humanity due raiding, conquest, slavery, colonization, trade, etc., the term "race" ceased to have any meaning hundreds of years ago. And given that DNA evidence shows that all Homo Sapiens originated from a single ancestor or small tribal unit some 100,000 to 250,000 years ago, we can definitively say "race" is an invalid concept.
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Myself, I think the first turning point of the Stalingrad campaign was the conference between Hitler, Paulus, von Weichs and Halder. At this point the Germans have yet to commit themselves fully to fighting in Stalingrad (few if any troops have entered the city at this time), yet Paulus is already calling for more divisions to complete the conquest of the city. Halder, when asked about divisions, basically gives the same answer that General Gamelin did in France in 1940, there are none to spare. My reasoning why this is a turning point is that Hitler and the three generals at the conference don't stop, look at the situation, reconsider their options and realize they are overextended (like they were in December 1941 in front of Moscow). Instead, they commit themselves to fighting the attritional warfare both outside and inside of Stalingrad. They had a choice at this point, to realize that they didn't have the forces on either front to complete both tasks and work out a solution to facilitate a return to mobile warfare (perhaps even pulling back to the Don). Instead, they decided to both rob Peter to pay Paulus (transferring 3 divisions from 4th Panzer Army to 6th Army) and reinforce failure.
Fall Blau may have failed at the point you indicated (the meeting where Hitler lost his temper), but I think this is now that the wheels really start falling off the German war machine. Everyone at the conference is beginning to realize things are not going well, but none of them are unwilling to voice their concerns and make the tough choices required to salvage the situation. Thus they committed themselves to attritional warfare. They end up acting like the monkey that is caught with its hand in the pot, refusing to let go of the fruit even though it means he can't get his arm free, and so is trapped.
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Of course, one reason that Soviet propaganda may have idolized Jacob Pavlov is because, as you state at the end of the video, he was an ardent Communist who survived the war, and could therefore be paraded around as a socialist national hero. Naumov, on the other hand, was a captain (much less bourgeois than a "mere" sergeant), may not have been an ardent Communist (which we will never know), and died during the battle. Therefore, he was far less useful for promoting the ideals of Communism than Pavlov. It is a pity the Soviet propaganda distorts reality so much, and in fact has partially denigrated the actual act of heroism it is trying to extol.
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It helped Napoleon that he inherited a French Army that was adopting tactics that had been proposed following the American Revolution but only partially implemented prior to the French Revolution (skirmish lines, massed artillery, infantry column, etc.). Napoleon's innovations were (I think) creating the division and quick-step marching, and (most definitely) moving units at the operational level to maximum effect. It was the latter that allowed Napoleon to concentrate his forces against opposing armies with great rapidity, achieving local superiority in the face of overwhelming odds at the strategic level.
His fatal flaw was often underestimating his opponent. He also did not figure out a way to adapt the basic infantry tactics when faced with someone who knew how to use terrain to their advantage (i.e. the Duke of Wellington and Archduke Charles). This lead the Duke of Wellington to comment once, "They came on in the same old way and we defeated them in the same old way". He also forgot that people learned from their mistakes, and would adapt to counter his way of waging war. Finally, as with the Germans in WW2, he forgot that he might have a large pool of men to call on, but it was not inexhaustible. Attrition from disease and fighting would inevitably wear his armies down to nothing.
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@TheImperatorKnight However, without oversight, capitalists tend to become avaricious and you end up with the same situation that lead to the collapse of most Chinese dynasties, brought about the French Revolution, etc. The theory of economics also tends to ignore two factors. First, every system, no matter what it is, has a carrying capacity. With the marketplace, there is a limit to what you can sell (as Gateway computers discovered the hard way). Second, theory tends to overlook reality, most importantly, base human nature. Most people who end up in the top echelons become detached from their workers, and so begin to exploit them by cutting wages, etc., in order to benefit themselves. There is a good reason why the Greeks said four of the deadly sins released by Pandora were Greed, Envy, Gluttony and Lust. That being said, socialism in all its forms is a fools dream, because socialism blithely ignores base human nature completely. At least capitalism embraces reality.
Capitalism works, and it does, and quite effectively. Indeed, if you read the Bible you find Christ uses a lot of marketplace analogies in the parables. However, unless there is oversight capitalism degenerates into one form or other of slavery. Many CEOs and company presidents would like nothing more than to run their companies like plantations or the Potosi slave mines. After all, you get rich, there is little overhead, and you have product to sell. Who cares about the people working for you? After all, they don't buy your product.
Also, government is responsible for the vast majority of infrastructure that empowers industry. The road network is one example, water and sewage another. I know of only two dams in the world that were built using private funds alone, Boulder (Hoover) dam and the dam at Whitehorse, Yukion. The vast majority are government projects, either directly or indirectly. Same with many power stations.
Stating that the market is independent of government also ignores the whole issue of tariffs, trade agreements and the like. And without government intervention, companies and nations would go bankrupt as cheap offshore products flood the markets. Industrialized nations would rapidly lose their farms which is the basis for any economy or nation, as the Japanese well know (which is why they don't allow foreign importation of rice). So, I guess we will have to agree to disagree on this one.
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@Kilroywas As the Mythbusters would say, I think it is plausible but not proven. I have read accounts of Japanese pilots during the battle of Midway being given "Aviation Pill A". The nature of this pill was never mentioned, but is rather suspicious in light of the TimeGhost video. Having troops somewhat high on drugs would also explain how the Wehrmacht forces could push so hard for so long during 1940 and 1941, then end up having to stop for 2-3 days. Granted, I could be reading too much into this and the halt at the channel can be explained by logistical issues. However, it could also be in part due to soldiers coming down from a "high" and being unable to fight. Given how willing (high strung?) German soldiers were to commit atrocities against civilians and prisoners (including machine-gunning refugees along the highways), it does make for a reasonable circumstantial case. Without proper documentation, such as medical records indicating these pills were given to specific units on particular days, it would never stand up in a court of law or as a university thesis.
However, before you get upset, please remember my argument is based on circumstantial evidence and what was presented in Indy's video. Even if drugs were administered, they would have been to select groups of soldiers at specific times, not to the entire army all at once for an extended period of time. If they were used, it would be to "enhance combat efficiency" during critical phases of a battle (i.e., give the troops an extra boost to overpower their opponents). Also, the concentration of meth would have been relatively low compared to what people consume to get a "fix" because you would want to "invigorate" the troops, not make it so they could not perform properly. The idea would be similar to giving someone a can of Red Bull to keep them awake when pulling an all-nighter (at least that is how they would justify it). Still, I will freely admit that apart from the TimeGhost video and the Midway reference I have not any other references to combat enhancing agents being employed by any of the combatants during the war, so your point is well taken.
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The comment you make in your second paragraph reminds me of one Economic Geography class I took years ago. The prof was talking about one of the earliest theories of economics, which was explaining the distribution of crops around urban centres. He then started with his fundamental statements, of which the first was that "people think logically". Some wiseacre in the back of the class piped up, "Well, you can throw that theory out the window.", to which we all laughed. But you are right, economics is a combination of finances and psychology, with other perturbating forces we have no control over tossed in for good measure (weather, rate of replenishment, etc.).
Regarding minimum wage, again you are more or less correct. The issue is the FEAR that raising the workers wages will result in major issues, and ignores the fact that such increases can be spread over the entire suite of products sold. It also ignores the very real benefits of having a healthier, happier, better fed workforce increasing productivity and/or quality of the product. It is also humane. Like many theorists, I think economists forget that their numbers represent real people leading their lives. I also think many liberal or anarcho-capitalists forget that the theory they support or propose will eventually end up leading to the very conditions that created Socialism and Marxism(Communism) in the first place, i.e. the early Industrial Revolution's working conditions, or worse.
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Pantelis Tzimas However, there is a difference between egalitarianism and having Christian charity. You are correct that there are differences between people with regard to their mental or physical abilities. It must be remembered, though, that all people should be equal before the law, and should be seen as human beings. This means it is up to us to help those who have difficulties, not mock them or look down our noses at them. I have talked to many street people who are extremely articulate and want to work, but have disabilities or other non-addiction related issues that prevent them from doing so. It also depends on who you call "competent people", because many individuals who appear competent are really shysters and con-men in suits, preying on the weak. This includes many of the wealthy businessmen are in the top 5%.
The system that appears to work best in the world is not full-on capitalism, nor is it a socialist approach. What most countries in the world have is a mixed economy, with free market (capitalist) system that has controls placed on it to prevent the formation of monopolies, protect the populace from apathetic individuals who worry more about profit than people, and work to avoid a boom-bust cycle that unfettered capitalism would likely degenerate into. The issue here boils down to the degree of control that is administered. Too much and the economy (and creativity) stagnates. Too little and one winds up with massive numbers of bankruptcies and failed businesses. Finding that balance between is the tricky part.
Lastly, I would like to ask what criteria one should use to determine if someone is worth helping? In this one needs to take into account the fact that health care is important. A population that has universal health care is a lot happier and probably more productive than one that does not. The presence of a social safety net means fewer problems for people who suddenly find themselves unemployed through no fault of their own. Where do you draw the line?
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I don't have an issue with capitalism per se, but the issue we have nowadays is the hoarding of wealth by many of the rich, rather than wise investment in creating new industry and job opportunities. This is the real issue. People like Elon Musk and Rockefeller produced industries and jobs, growing the economy. I don't begrudge them their wealth because they are (or did) work hard to create something with the profits they made. However, many of the wealthy nowadays take advantage of the perks of being in a managerial or high corporate executive position to live the high life, wasting money that could be spent elsewhere, or salting it away in offshore accounts where it just sits.
Any healthy system requires some degree of imbalance to function. Hydroelectric power generation works this way, so do the cells in our bodies. . An economy is about the flow of money within the market system. And this is why I have problems with those capitalists who hoard wealth - they remove capital from the system and eventually destabilize the economy (by creating an inverted pyramid of capital). For a somewhat different reason I think that people who adhere to purely socialist ideals have no understanding of economics either. Creating a completely level playing field, like hard core socialists and Marxists claim will create a "worker's paradise", is a dead end as well, since distributing the wealth evenly leads to stagnation (with no large pool of capital, how will you build new factories and businesses) and eventually the death of the economy. Besides, has anyone seen how incompetent a lot of senior civil servants are? I wouldn't trust most of them to run a coffee shop.
One other thing I notice you did not really mention was the issue of the cost of living. If we have a situation where people have to hold down 2 or 3 jobs just to make ends meet, there is an issue. People shouldn't be living on the verge of starvation when working as hard as they can. One could say to them that they should get another job, but this is not always possible. In one case where I live, a new business opened up and were hiring 10 employees. There were over 200 applicants! Plus, one has to always remember that you are not talking about numbers or statistics. These are real people who have spouses and children. You also cannot forget that when the industrial revolution started in Britain, there was a lot of poverty and even starvation, and no jobs. This lead to a massive increase in crime, which in turn lead people being arrested, convicted, then forced to live on prison hulks, or eventually shipped off to places like Australia. Capitalism is a reasonable system, but we also have to remember that we have to ensure there is a humanitarian bent to is as well. Otherwise, people will get exploited (check out the "Revolutions" history podcast where he talks about the causes of some of the revolutions he covers) and quite possibly rebel.
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I think I said this once before, but history is about reconstructing what actually happened based on imperfect observation of the events and often fragmentary evidence. We can more or less figure out what occurred, but it takes careful reading of human observations and using those to interpret the physical evidence that exists. Unfortunately, human beings each have a limited view of events that is skewed by prejudice/bias/ego and often misremembered/reinterpreted over time. With the exception of individuals with eidetic memories, we usually forget details of the event(s) or conversations, and mentally try to fill in those gaps, further distorting the record (I saw a very good TV show that covered this phenomenon). As you point out, you need multiple sources and many different types of evidence to help clarify the course of events. Then comes the hardest part for any historian - leaving preconceived notions and biases at the door to try and reconstruct, to the best of their ability, what actually happened based on flawed human recollection.
One need only look at recent history with the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Several survivors claimed the ship broke up as it sank, yet the inquiry never included this information in their report. That is because the break-up of the ship would have called into question the quality of British ship building at the time. Nor did they include a very important fact that Captain Smith actually started up the ship's engines and steamed away from the site of the collision at around 10-12 knots for about 15 minutes (which explains why none of the passengers recall ever saw the iceberg from the lifeboats)! This last bit of important information was only recently discovered in the notes made by one of the members of the review board at the inquiry. This was pretty much buried by the review board because this would impugned Captain Smith reputation even further. And yet both these facts are important in the narrative of how and why RMS Titanic sank.
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@TheImperatorKnight If the statistics that Richard Overy presents in "Why the Allies Won" are correct, this is only part of the story. Yes, Lend-Lease gave the Russians the boots, trucks and food they needed to go onto the offensive. However, the Russians produced more equipment with fewer raw materials than the Germans did, and got more of it to the front than the Germans did even in 1941. They were able to move a large proportion of their factories beyond the reach of the Germans in 1941, a feat that I doubt the Germans could have replicated.
I think the issue with German logistics was something you touched on but may not have fully explored, that being the huge number of "satrapies" created within the Wehrmacht and German industry. Everyone in the Third Reich was "empire building", so rather than having a unified manufacturing and supply system, you had a bunch of little fiefdoms all scrambling for the same resources. This lead to a rat's nest of conflicting priorities and massive inefficiencies. There was no real centralized planning, which is what happened in the Soviet Union and, ironically enough, in the United States. It is something that Speer tried, with some success, to fix in 1943 and 1944.
This is perfectly illustrated with your description of the chain of command at 4:26 in the video. I mean, seriously, why wasn't there a 3rd person at railhead in charge of distributing the supplies to the units as required, rather than QM General Wagner (whom I suspect was back in Germany)? Why should the general in charge of supplying the army be saddled with the minutia of which unit gets what? Why should the Luftwaffe have a completely different system separate from the Army one vying for the same transportation links? This chain of command makes absolutely no sense at all!
However, it does fit with the Nazi ideology, as exemplified by Hitler's inner circle, of creating competing entities that fight one another for some resource (including access to Hitler), preventing any one entity becoming too powerful. And, in my opinion, it also fits with the explanation that the Germans didn't plan for extended campaigns or wars, and thus overlooked the importance of a rational logistical system to supply their army over the long haul.
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TIK, I disagree that the socialist policies create monopolies. One need only see the rise of monopolies like the medieval guilds, the Hudson's Bay Company, British East India Company and other monopolies in the 1700s, Standard Oil and the railroad barons in the US during the 1800s (when socialism was not influential), and Microsoft, AT&T, and more modern examples i the 20th century. Indeed, it was government policy that broke up the monopolies like Standard oil. The real driving force for monopolies is greed, the desire to acquire more and more until you own everything and can dictate your own price. They occur because of base human nature, not socialism. Yes, socialism forms a government-based monopoly, that I won't disagree with. But monopolies have been around long before socialism was dreamt of.
I would argue that socialism came about BECAUSE of monopolies and their policies of keeping wages low to increase profit margins. That, and low living standards at the start of the industrial revolution caused by low wages. What Marx, Engels and many other socialists never grasped, because of their myopia and egos, and complete lack of understanding of human nature, is that the conditions that birthed socialism were short-lived phenomena that would be remedied by improved living standards.
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Having watched the entire series on Market Garden, I will have to disagree somewhat with your summary of what went wrong. Overall, although nice in concept, the main issue with the attack was that it was made with the presumption that the Germans were still on the run and incapable of mounting a serious defence. This is somewhat understandable, as the British Army (as well as the Americans) had made spectacular gains following the defeat of the German army in Normandy. I seem to recall that the British Army raced the 300+ kilometres from the Seine to the Antwerp in a little over 2 weeks. It is possible that Montgomery may have been trying to repeat, or was thinking back on, his successful advance on Tripoli. Here, Montgomery "suckered" Rommel into defending a line at Beurat, then punched through Rommel's defences and "bounced" the Axis forces out of the more defensible terrain (Homs-Tarhuna position) just east of Tripoli before they could dig in and defend the approaches to the port. It may be my imagination, but Market Garden seems to have the same feel to it (race up and take the bridges before the enemy can react). Sadly, for the airborne troops and 30 Corps, the British intelligence was lacking and did not trust the Dutch underground's reports, with fatal results. I also agree that the plan relied too heavily on the enemy reacting the way you hoped they would, and was a bit overambitious. Was it a mistake? No, I don't think so, merely a plan that did not work out. Market-Garden is probably the epitome of the old saying, "Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan". Or, to quote Maxwell Smart, "Missed it by that much!"
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@thevillaaston7811 Thank you for your reply. I have seen stuff from a couple of trolls, one of whom is a Patton fanatic. To clarify my position, I am not saying that Montgomery and the British Army did not make mistakes. They are only human (although I will admit that Monty's ego got in the way of sound judgement on several occasions). General Horrocks, in an interview done for "The World at War", a brilliant 1970s history of WW2, acknowledges that the British Army had enough supplies and should have pressed on to cut the isthmus at Beveland would have prevented the Germans from evacuating many of their troops from the Scheldt estuary. This is something that Cornelius Ryan points out in "A Bridge Too Far". However, based on the collapse of the front in France, everyone figured they could win the war in 1944. Almost everyone figured they could do so. In addition, it must be remembered the British army in northwest Europe was the LAST army they could put in the field. Manpower issues were so bad that by late 1944 or early 1945 they were cannibalizing divisions to bring other units up to strength. Since we are looking at things in 20:20 hindsight and don't have the huge responsibilities these generals had, we can only guess what we would have done in the same situation. As far as Montgomery's responsibility for the partial failure/partial success of Market Garden, all one can do is repeat Harry Truman's famous placard, "The Buck Stops Here".
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@Ensign_Nemo Yes, definitely. Once you have an ongoing campaign or your opponent has a preconceived notion, it is easy to "repurpose" it to act as camouflage for a surprise attack or another operation (although feeding into your opponent's preconceptions is the more common approach). Perhaps the best example of using an ongoing campaign as a smokescreen is the 9th Army offensive to the Rhine in 1945, where the Germans were so preoccupied with Montgomery's attack through the Reichwald they completely overlooked Simpson's 9th Army until it was too late. General Slim pulled off the same tactic in Burma in 1944 at Meiktila. The principle difference between this and Operation Barbarossa is scale - the 9th Army attack was at the operational level, while Barbarossa was at the strategic level. But I don't think this makes Hitler some 200 IQ wunderkind, he's just using an ongoing campaign to camouflage preparations for another (i.e., this was not pre-planned way back in June 1940). Let's face it, with the vagaries of war, even the Allies and the Russians in 1944 with their overwhelming superiority in the field and in the air had no idea how things would turn out even 1-2 months down the road. To think Hitler was prescient enough to see a year into the future is ridiculous. To look at it any other way is, in my opinion, putting the cart WAY before the horse.
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Regarding the initial landing, I think the biggest failure was not landing sufficient forces at Anzio. I can see Lucas' point of view. He had only two divisions, so it would have been difficult to both protect the landing areas (to avoid being cut off) and strike out through the Alban Hills. Also, considering what happened during the German counterattack after the landings, I can't really blame Lucas. Also, we weren't there at the time. History gives us 20:20 hindsight and we can see "over the hill", unlike the commanders making the decisions at the time. Had sufficient shipping been available, the allies could have landed one or two more divisions, including an armoured division, which would have given the landing force a hard hitting, fast acting force that could have cut the Axis communication and supply lines to Monte Cassino and the Gustav Line. Trying to reach and hold the Alban hills might have overstretched the Allied defense lines, giving the Germans the chance to penetrate the Allied lines and collapse the beachhead. I will agree, though, that Lucas may not have been the best commander for the invasion.
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@neilkenny4585 You obviously have not been watching Time Ghost's week by week recounting of WW2. Britain was actively trying to help the Finns against the Soviets during the Winter War of 1939-1940, and even managed to send some aircraft to Finland to fight the Soviets. Unfortunately, access to Finland was extremely limited. Britain also had plans to launch air raids against Baku and the Caucuses oil fields in 1940. The only reason they didn't was because they didn't feel that they would be able to stop a Russian offensive into Iran and on into Iraq, where the bombers would be stationed (not to mention Britain's Middle East oil fields). It was better to sit and bide ones time, and not fight too many foes at once.
With regards to a Navy in WW1, why did Germany even need one? The US, Japan, France and Britain were all invested in international maritime trade, unlike Germany. And again, why was their navy built specifically to take out the Royal Navy? That was its expressed purpose, not protection of trade, but destroying the Royal Navy. That is why their ships were mostly designed with the minimum of crew comforts, and why the sailors lived in barracks on shore most of the time.
You can say what you want, but Germany had no reason or business invading Belgium. IT WAS WRONG! You can make all the excuses you like, but the point of fact is that Germany wanted a war in 1914 to defeat the Russians before they industrialized, and wanted to impose their will on the then order of Europe. They were itching for a fight. I agree that in 1939 the British government made promises to Poland it could not keep. I think they thought that by doing so they might cause the Germans to pause and rethink what they were doing. Like many miscalculations before and after, they were wrong. Hitler wanted a war, and he got it. Britain ended up paying the price, although I think the war merely hastened what was already happening, that is, the breakup of the empire. But if you think WW2 was not a justified war, you should watch the Time Ghost series "War on Humanity" or the Nazi's plans for the occupation of Britain and, believe it or not, the United States. Hitler and his cohorts were monsters who had to be stopped, and were.
By the way, two things. One, I do research stuff. I actually have a fairly extensive home library, and my parents served in WW2. Two, I have never once called you or anyone else corresponding on this site a Nazi.
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@neilkenny4585 I took a quick look at the synopses, and am pretty sure I would probably get about half way through them before tossing them out. They seem to be written by people who long for the British Empire as it was, ignoring the fact that the world was changing at the time. Are both authors ignoring the growing independence movements worldwide? The developing unsustainability of the Empire? Britains slow decline due to aging industrial complexes and changing technology?
I agree that WWI and WWII bankrupted Britain, of that there is no doubt. But in the long term, Britain's participation in WWI prevented the formation of a Europe dominated by a rapacious Germany bent on European hegemony. If Germany had defeated France and Russia, they wouldn't have been content to stop there. The German High Seas Fleet wanted to defeat the Royal Navy and replace it. It would probably have not taken long for the Germans to start wanting to invade England as well. Same in WWII, but worse, as Germany was driven by a bunch of ideologues who viewed themselves as the master race who's prime duty was to enslave anyone who was "inferior". In both cases, a Germany triumphant wouldn't want any rivals on the world stage. Do you really think they would have left Britain alone? Seriously, this is revisionist history at its worst, trying to rewrite history to create a utopian version where everyone gets along together, kumbaya.
Both books seem to be written from an Anglo-centric view, and ignore the larger picture of what would have happened in the world had Britain not sacrificed its treasure and Empire to save humanity. To ignore this is to belittle the sacrifices of 2 generations of Britain's youth, and the enormous amount of gratitude and respect Britain has obtained through their actions.
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@Raskolnikov70 Yes, you are right. Everything I said was predicated on the Wehrmacht not losing significant numbers of troops during Fall Blau, actually having a logistical system that worked (i.e. kept feeding replacements in where needed, maintained equipment properly, replaced war material and kept the armies fully supplied with food, fuel and ammo), and encircling and destroying large numbers of Red Army formations like they did in 1941. Since none of these criteria were met, they had no way to win other than destroying the morale of the Soviet leadership. Nazi Germany's biggest problem is that they did not plan (or even think about what was required) for an extended war, and thus did not make provisions for increasing production, creating solid logistical structures, and training sufficient manpower to replace losses. They only really started doing this in 1943, by which time it was too late.
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I do agree that economics alone cannot explain the collapse. I also concur there were a multiplicity of factors that combined to make this collapse occur:
1) Economics - the lack to food is definitely a major issue here. Centralization and rationing are targeted as the main culprits. But is this really the case? How much food did Austro-Hungary consume versus its production? If, like Germany in 1917-1918, there was a net deficit (i.e., they had to import food from elsewhere), then centralization of food distribution does make sense. Germany also suffered from food riots in 1918 as well, but didn't disintegrate. Britain in both WWI and WW2 had food rationing, as did the US in WW2, yet there were no revolutions in these countries. Therefore, I would suggest that the economics of food distribution was only part of the story.
2) Military defeats - the loss of morale within both the military and civilian populations, as well as the high death toll, would have contributed to the collapse of the multi-ethnic state. Following the defeat in the battle of Vittorio Veneto in 1918, as well as the collapse of the Balkan Front, what little hope the Austro-Hungarians had of ultimate victory would have vanished. People would have started searching around for both scapegoats and the means to get out of the war before they were invaded. In desperation they would have turned to solutions other than those presented by the central government, in this case nationalistically-based states.
3) Ethnicity - this had already posed problems for the Hapsburgs as they declined in power from 1848-1867, which is why the Hungarians were given more say in government and the Austrian Empire was renamed the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Habsburgs "dodged a bullet" during this time, but many nationalist groups sprang up during this time. Those that were well organized and were making their presence felt on the international scene (especially during WW1) obtained recognition both inside Austro-Hungary and internationally. Thus, when the crises of 1917-1918 (economic and military) hit, these groups (Czechs, Hungarians, Slovaks, Croatians, Slovenes) attracted a lot adherents. This lead to a dispersal of political power and created clear factions within Austro-Hungary. It also didn't help that these very groups were being persecuted, further solidifying the legitimacy of these political groups.
4) External pressures - the situation in 1918 was definitely different than in 1848. In 1848, several countries in Europe were suffering from political upheavals, and many nation states were struggling to maintain the post-Napoleonic stability in Europe. Since these were all internal revolts that, had they spread, could have destabilized Europe. efforts were made to help nations in the throws of revolution. In 1918, the British and French (as well as the Americans), wanted to destabilize the Central Powers, so it behooved them to legitimize and support these independence movements. It also allowed the Allies to punish Austro-Hungary for starting the war, and weaken them (it was hoped) to the point where they would be unable to start another "War to end all wars".
These four factors (there may be some I didn't think of), working in concert caused the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. For instance, when Hungarian soldiers on the front lines were told to head home by the Hungarian politicians, they did so. Literally, they dropped their weapons and walked away. I know this from talking with a couple of Hungarians whose fathers fought in WW1. In other words, the soldiers of various ethnic backgrounds listened to politicians from their own ethnic backgrounds, not the Austrian officer corps. The civilian population, tired of the war, the casualties caused by inept leadership, food shortages and the like, followed suit.
Therefore, I would say that rather than socialist policies, the real cause for the lack of food and materials were the British blockade, inept management of those resources on hand, and disruption of international trade within Europe itself. Indeed, if you think about it, if you cannot sustain your own population with your own agricultural base, it is really STUPID to start a war with the breadbasket of Europe - Russia, and the country that still pretty much controlled international trade - Britain.
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@empowl1607 I think you also have to look at motive. Yes, Britain had a large navy, etc. However, the navy was used primarily as a defensive tool, to protect British and international trade. Part of Britain's empire came about as reparations for aggressive French expansion during the time of Louis XIV and XV (Canada and parts of India, for example). Britain was interested in trade, not fighting another war. In fact, if you look at the build-up of military hardware, Britain lagged behind Germany from the time Hitler took power until around mid-1940 or 1941.
It is very easy to sit on a moral pedestal with 20/20 hindsight and say how awful the British were for creating their empire. I am not making excuses for the people who made the policies and created the empire by force, graft, theft, etc. But you also cannot judge those people by our modern standards. The world was different back then, and nations had different ethical viewpoints (mostly those of robber barons or mafia dons). We can, however, use modern standards to judge Nazi Germany because it came into existence in modern times. We know they waged aggressive war against every nation surrounding them, even those who were neutral (Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece), and eventually even their own allies. So no, it is not valid to equate Britain with Nazi Germany. As Yellow 13 said, it is the same as equating carrots to pineapples.
As far as the US goes, they kinda fall in the middle. I have always viewed the US as the guy with the angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other. Sometimes the US does the right thing for the right reasons, other times the wrong thing for the wrong reasons. The only reason I would not label the US as an aggressor nation is that they are not actively seeking to expand territory per se. Trying to expand influence, yes. Increase access to resources, yes. Actively taking over and governing countries, no.
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This video supports what I have told researchers and others, "Don't rely on other people's numbers, always check the original sources or data whenever possible". I appreciate that you made this video to explain how an error was made, and that you tried to verify the numbers to the best of your ability. Most historians get lazy and quote other people's quotes of another's quotes. I admire you for taking the time to verify your facts, explaining why this happened by showing some of the original sources, and offering to correct the video. It takes a big man to do this.
Much as it would be a pain in the butt, I would suggest you make the correction. I don't know how much work this will entail, but you could also use this as a further opportunity to explain the issues with sorting out casualty figures from the archives.
I would like to add, please, don't worry about taking a break. Your physical and mental health are more important, and everyone needs a vacation to recharge their "batteries" to avoid a physical and/or mental breakdown. Just let us know in advance that you plan to take a month or so off for R&R. Especially if you wish to finish pushing this boulder over the mountain and show Sisyphus he was a wuss!
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@el_bizcocho6916 Well, apart from a single Canadian division on Britain, they were fighting alone on the home front. They would have had a hard time bringing troops in from the rest of the Empire, then equip and feed them given the U-boat campaign. Plus, the troops from the Empire were mostly fighting elsewhere at the time. The British Army/Imperial Forces were almost over-extended even with the help of the Aussies, South Africans, Indians and New Zealanders in North Africa and elsewhere. And you have to remember they had to leave garrison troops in various places to protect against sabotage, etc. So, for just over a year, Britain was fighting more or less on its own against Germany and Italy, plus staring down the barrel of the very real prospect they might end up having to fight the Soviet Union as well. Not a comfortable position to be in.
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I look at the existence of God through the lens of physics. If one looks at explanations of the universe through concepts like string theory, then our reality is basically a four-dimensional space (length, width, depth and time, perhaps) existing within a much larger reality of multiple dimensions. God is a multi-dimensional being who exists outside of our reality, and perhaps on a higher plane than all the dimensions that make up the multiverse. In other words, God exists outside of time, and indeed time has no meaning to God. God exists outside of physical reality, and is omnipotent because He can make changes to any and all dimensions. This also means God is omnipresent, because He can be present in any dimension at any time and place of His choosing, and influence it as He desires.
Also, being omnipotent and existing outside of time does present an issue for God, in that He can see ALL outcomes of decisions that are made by us humans. Every time we come to a point where we make a decision, there is a fork in the road. Every choice leads to other choices, creating a life path that is like a growing tree, or perhaps better described as a root system. We can only see what is in front of us, but God sees the entire root system. On top of that, He can see how our individual root system of potential choices interacts with all the others that we make contact with throughout our lives. This is why God does not usually interfere with our lives or with history, because He knows how one small change can ripple throughout the system. It also takes away one of the greatest gifts God has given us, freedom of choice. If we are to receive the gift of eternal life, we need to show we are deserving of it through how we interact with others.
After all, if one is a paranoid murdering psychopath, would one ever find happiness in a kingdom where kindness and mercy are the order of the day? And wouldn't those stains on the soul become the sources of the fire that destroys the soul in the light of God Himself?
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I think it is possible that all the statements could be correct, and we are seeing the issue in small chunks, like puzzle pieces. The statements are not as contradictory as they might first appear, especially given the fog of war and rushed nature of the planning and execution of Market-Garden. Having read Gavin's book, he strikes me as being an extremely honest biographer.
What might have happened is the following. Gavin and Browning discussed the issue and agree the heights are important, and so Browning directed Gavin to make the heights a priority target. Following these orders, Gavin sends a large portion of his forces to the heights. However, prior to leaving England he orally orders Lindquist to send one battalion to secure the bridge immediately after landing. However, this order is given at the last minute, in the midst of their rush to load the troops and equipment, possibly on the runway with aircraft warming up. Gavin tells Lindquist to send a battalion to seize the bridge, but Lindquist does not hear Gavin's order over the din or the confusion of preparing for the drop (or, being human and overloaded with tasks or suffering from target fixation, forgets). As a result, all parties are right in their statements, and in effect all are to blame. And the vital task was not accomplished.
That said, it is possible that the SS troops could have overrun a single US battalion holding a bridgehead on the north end of Nijmegen bridge, or destroyed the bridge with artillery fire if that failed. Either way, I don't think there were sufficient airborne troops at Nijmegen to have pushed the Germans out of artillery range of the bridge and kept it intact for later use. Basically, the Germans reacted faster and with greater skill than the Allies could muster.
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@thevillaaston7811 I agree that the armies were able to get sufficient supplies to continue their offensives, but the supply lines were stretched very thin. Although I don't have the statistics, the feeling I get from reading about this time of the war was that there was a choice to shut everything down except for one large offensive, or have a series of smaller offensives with limited objectives to try to keep up the pressure. In Company Commander, the author says that the American FFE (fire for effect) at the start of the Battle of the Bulge was only 3 rounds per gun. I'll have to find the quote, but it might even have been only 3 rounds in total! Patton had to virtually close down his attack at Metz during the autumn, 21st Army Group basically stalled except for the Canadian Army clearing the Schelt, etc. So yes, you are correct in your assertion that enough supplies were getting to the front to continue offensive action, but I get the feeling it was not sufficient enough to allow for large-scale exploitive/ deep penetration attacks (like those the Allies conducted after January 1945). In a sense, the Allies shot their bolt with regards to supplies during Market-Garden. They then had to spend the next 3-4 months improving their logistical network (opening Antwerp really helped for this) and stockpiling enough supplies to conduct major offensives.
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@thevillaaston7811 I don't know if Eisenhower had an overall plan and wanted to repeat Marshall Foch's WW1 strategy against Germans, i.e. using a broad front to conceal where offensives would originate from and deal repeated hammer blows up and down the line, never giving the opponent the chance to rest or put reserves in the line decisively. On the other hand, his "strategy" may have been the result of his lack of field command experience (nil), and he didn't have a clear idea which way to enter Germany when he took over at the beginning of September. I know Eisenhower's lack of command experience worried Monty, and rightly so. However, Montgomery and Bradley were, by this time, starting to butt heads, and it may have been Eisenhower's desire to smooth ruffled feathers between the two commanders (four if you add in Hodges and Patton) as much as possible, as well as mollifying the American Press (and American support at home) which lead him to do what he did. We will never truly know. I do think, though, that if Eisenhower was going to take charge he should have taken stronger control of the 1st US Army, and NOT allowed Hodges and Co. to waste 3 whole months battering themselves silly at Aachen and in the Huertgen Forest. That ill-conceived (if it was even planned at all) and botched offensive is one the main reasons the Battle of the Bulge took place.
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John Cornell So, Market-Garden and the offensive discussed here were basically phase one of a 3-stage plan. There were three problems (potential and otherwise) with the concept. First, a single thrust would have allowed the Axis to predict where the attack would be coming from, and throw everything at it. Strategic surprise would have been difficult. Plus, Holland is not exactly an easy place to fight through (although by the end of this part of the offensive they would have been past the worst of it). Second, you would still be open to an Ardennes-style offensive potentially cutting you off if your attack stalled or took too long to resupply. The German start lines would likely have been closer to Antwerp as well. Third, and most important (unfortunately), was politics. By this time Bradley, Patton and Hodges hated the idea and optics of the allied armies being led by a Brit, especially Montgomery. I think the American public would also have been demanding a US general lead the attack because by this time of the war they were supplying the bulk of the Allied army in western Europe. It was also difficult for most of the American generals to swallow because they had just spent the last 3 months undercutting Montgomery in the press! As an aside, I always find it interesting that Simpson of 9th US Army never had problems getting along with Monty, and 82nd Airborne's General Gavin prefered Monty to most of the other US generals.
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@bigwoody4704 I think you missed the first line I wrote at the start of this thread, "I always thought the concept of creating a "sledgehammer" of 40 divisions and driving them into the Ruhr was a bit ridiculous". It was Monty's plan and, as Harry S. Truman once said, "The Buck Stops Here", i.e. it was his idea with his backing, so the failure also falls on him. I will also add that, had it actually succeeded (which we now know with 20:20 hindsight was a long shot) Montgomery would have been hailed as a military genius and we would not be having this discussion. Same with Patton - had he failed at El Guettar, he would likely have been denigrated like Truscott at Anzio. So no, I am not a Montgomery apologist, but do recognize he was a good army commander who lead the British Army to victory in North Africa and Europe. Were he as incompetent as many American authors say he was, he would have been replaced.
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@bigwoody4704 Actually, it was the press that deliberately besmirched Meade's name. I think it was during the Battle of the Wilderness that Meade got ticked off with a reporter trying to get dirt on Grant. Meade tossed the guy out of his tent (as I recall, literally tossed), and this reporter took offence. He then gathered his media buddies and together they decided to give all credit in future battles to Grant. The British call this "sending someone to Coventry" (why Coventry I have no idea).
With regards to Dan Sickles, historians still have mixed feelings about his movement into the Peach Orchard, Devils's Den and the Wheat Field. On one had he exposed his Corps to an attack that virtually gutted it, but on the hand he may have accidentally (it was definitely not on purpose) delayed and weakened the blow against Sykes Corps, buying precious time for the Union forces to fortify Little Round Top. This does not excuse Sickle's actions, which were against orders. Nor are military historians sure it had this effect, as had he remained in position it is possible he might have been able to launch a flank attack on Hood and McLaw's left flank. And yes, he did use this for political gain, even having his leg embalmed and placed in a glass case to show his guests years after the war.
On the topic of Monty, yes, he did lie to the press when he didn't have to, he was an egotist (so were most, if not all, of the German generals), but in spite of all that I will say he was definitely a much better general than Sickles. I doubt Sickles could have taken his unit out of the line, performed a night march of 25 miles with an entire division (3rd) on unfamiliar roads, and plug the gap left in the lines when the Belgium Army capitulated. The only other Allied general I know who came close to this sort of manoeuver was Patton in the Ardennes. As far as lying to the media goes, I think the earliest example of this is Ramses II claiming victory over the Hittites in the Battle of Kadesh, 1274 BC. One has to ask, if he was victorious, why was the border between the Hittite kingdom (in modern day Turkey) and Egypt drawn SOUTH of Kadesh?
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@bigwoody4704 Let's see, 2nd Manassas, Bristoe Station, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, heck, even Antietam. Yep, little wonder Meade was cautious. Of course, given the fact that Lincoln had to deal with "The Confederates outnumber us two, three, no five times" McClellan for the first year of the war, I am not surprised he was a bit concerned about the slow pace of the army.
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10:49. I agree with what you are saying, TIK. ODS is definitely wrong, based on my limited knowledge on the subject. A couple of one semester university courses on economics does not make one an economist, which I freely admit. However, based on my knowledge, I can say that Capitalism is basically about commerce, a market based economy. State regulation is something that is imposed on capitalism by government. Although we may disagree on the role of government and its necessity in the economy, from my standpoint you are correct. Pure socialism is the state (government) ownership and control of industry, while pure capitalism is about leaving the control of privately-owned industry up to market forces. What ODS seems to be talking about here is the hybrid system that currently exists, in one form or another, in many countries in the world.
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@TheImperatorKnight Yes, but far right extremists are just as bad. Ask anyone who lives or has lived under a military dictatorship. I suspect you would find the people taking part in this rally come from all sections of the political spectrum. The problem is that right wing extremists are using the convoys as a means to spread dissension and promote their own agenda, which has NOTHING to do with vaccination at all (as seen by the weapons seizures at the US border, the US and Confederate flags being waved in the Canadian capitol, the banners saying "Spirit of 1776). If you question what I am talking about with regards to right wing extremists organizing things, please read this CTV news article about the convoy organizers to see what their political views are: https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/who-is-who-a-guide-to-the-major-players-in-the-trucker-convoy-protest-1.5776441
As far as the bulk of the participants, the whole thing with the convoys is not about fighting totalitarianism, but a small vociferous minority of all political stripes (perhaps 10% of the population) saying, "Don't do as I do, do as I say!" and "You can't tell me to do something even if it is in everyone's interest." It is very much the attitude of a petulant bully, not someone who is concerned about the health and welfare of society as a whole. Their whole argument is based on a selfish premise that doesn't take into account the public good. Nor is it based on scientific evidence, but rather fallacy, lies and misinformation. It has absolutely nothing to do with fighting totalitarianism. It is a form of enabled narcissistic self interest that expresses no concern about the health and well being of others, nothing more.
I would also add that this has nothing to do with racist, Marxist-Fascist governments overstepping bounds, but rather people getting what we in Canada call "cabin fever". Everyone has been under stress because of concerns over COVID and chaffing under restrictions (in part because the bulk of them have no knowledge of epidemiology) while lacking the means to "blow off steam", and some people are reaching the breaking point. It is a psychological issue, not sociological or political one. The fact that at least 75% of the population in our country has been vaccinated, and we have under 1/3 the infection rate that our "free" neighbours to the south have, suggests that we are on the right course to keep COVID-caused mortality down to a minimum.
And having worked with, and co-authored several peer reviewed scientific papers on, using insect viruses to control pest populations (not to mention read a fair bit on past human epidemics), I fully endorse what the government has been doing to contain and control this pandemic.
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I agree that Montgomery is under-rated. Part of this stems from his personality - he had the appalling habit of treating his peers badly, and did the same with many subordinates after the war. The other part was that he was British, not American, and most of the American generals (Simpson and Gavin excluded) hated fighting under the command of some cocky Brit. Since most of these people wrote memoirs that were widely read, he suffers in the minds of most readers of history (most of whom also accept the myth of the incredible German generals).
Regarding the Tiger tank, part of its success could be attributed to what you wrote above. Most people forget that the Tiger scored most of its victories in DEFENSIVE actions. The tanks could lie in ambush and take out their opponents before they knew what hit them. On the offensive, the Tiger was not that great, as the battles of Kursk, Medinine, Beja, and Wittman's final attack near Cramesnil in Normandy demonstrate.
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TIK, I appreciate the work you have done so far on the Stalingrad Series, and am constantly amazed and appreciative of all the work you have done. Your presentations are thoroughly researched, well documented and your discussions made logically. Your project has shed a lot of new light and dispelled a number of myths about this campaign. Although I might periodically disagree with your conclusions (especially with regards to economics), I cannot fault your research. As such, I have eagerly awaited and watched every episode you have released on the day you have posted it.
Having worked on scientific projects I know what it is like to get burned out on something. I once worked on a project that almost gave me a nervous breakdown, so I know where you are coming from. It is sometimes better to put something to one side and leave it for a while so you can approach it fresh after a break. Take as much time as you need.
I thought I would give you a quote from the Bibliographical Note from the final volume of Shelby Foote's "The Civil War, A Narrative: Red River to Appomattox", which I think describes what you are feeling right now. Hope it cheers you up a bit (it is also a great quote to throw at any critics).
"By way of possible extenuation, in response to complaints it took me five times longer to write the war than the participants took to fight it, I would point out that there were a good many more of them than there was of me."
Wishing you, your family, friends and acquaintances a Happy and Prosperous New Year in 2023.
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Obviously Nigel Askey never read how the British Army lost to the Zulus at Isandlwana (2,100 vs 19,000), yet an even more heavily outnumbered unit defeated the Zulus at Rorke's Drift (ca. 150 vs 5,000). Or other battles like Auerstadt, Bir Hakeim, etc. Then again, my boss used to say that models (like the Lanchester Square Law) were often used by people who couldn't do real research! Nigel Askey seems to use the van Daniken school of baffling people with b******t to support their point of view. There are numerous cases where units/armies that are outnumbered sometimes achieve things that are incredible, while in other cases huge armies can succumb to considerably smaller forces.
The Red Army (and French Army) defeats in 1940 - 1942 can be explained by poor leadership and poor training. Use Occam's Razor. Or, even better, use Hanlon's Razor, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". Many of the modern authors go back to original sources (i.e. unit records), rather than rely on the memories of generals who have their own axes to grind.
By the way, good work TIK. You give very good review using references and explaining why you used them. You will always have issues with people like Nigel Askey, after all, as Lincoln said, "... you can never please all the people all the time."
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The Truth The thing that really messed up the German war plans was not the lack of a "decisive battle", rather the depth of reserves the Soviet Union had. I was floored when I read that the USSR had a standing army of around 5 million men in June 1941, with 15 million reserves! I don't think it would have mattered if the Germans had followed their traditional method of warmaking, as they needed to annihilate the Red Army the equivalent of 4 times to win. Germany just didn't have the reserves of manpower available at that time. Nor were they ever really able to address it. Quite simply, the Russians bled the Wehrmacht to death, although it was a very Pyrrhic victory.
They also didn't take into account the attrition their forces would be subjected to during Barbarossa or later. The fact they didn't increase tank and aircraft production beyond their 1940 levels until January 1943 speaks volumes about their arrogance. The Wehrmacht also lacked mass-produced trucks and sufficient spares to keep the front lines supplied with fully functional equipment or replacements.
There was a very good quote about the German Army in Citino's "The German Way of War" to the effect that the Wehrmacht wasn't that modern after all, i.e., they hadn't learned from their mistakes in WW1 on the operational and strategic level. Sorry I can't give you the exact quote right now, my copy of this book is in storage. One quote that was given in the Time Ghost "The Great War" was quite apt as well. Paraphrasing what was said, "The German Army was outstanding tactically, [... ] operationally, and strategically bankrupt. In other words, at a tactical level the Landwehr (and later Wehrmacht) were extremely good at the tactical level, somewhat less so operationally (although I disagree with the author being quoted on this point), but never really had properly set objectives or goals for their offensives. Their blundering around in the spring of 1918 was called "the offensives to nowhere". The same could be seen for much of 1941 and 1942 - every general was vying to conquer this city or that, but no set stop points or objectives were really being specifically chosen. The German offensives more or less "went with the flow", and stopped when they either ran out of supplies or they encountered resistance they couldn't overcome. It was terrifying when you initially saw it, but once you figured out the trick, you could easily divert the spearheads into cul-de-sacs (rather like the Americans did in the Ardennes, or the Russians at Kursk).
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@joeblow5178 Indeed. However, for the generals to do so, they would have had to look at the broader strategic picture. This was something that OKH and OKW seemed incapable of doing (but as TIK points out, something that Hitler did do, but was routinely circumvented). Surely they should have seen that one of the best ways to knock Britain out of the war was to seize Egypt and the Suez Canal, and threatening the Middle East oil fields, but they didn't. For Barbarossa, the generals' complete lack of understanding logistics and supply did as much to deprive them of victory as the Red Army. Plus, at no point did attrition of equipment and manpower seem to enter their thoughts, and hence, planning. It was a really weird blind spot, and turned out to be the Achilles Heel of the Wehrmacht.
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@johnburns4017 No, the responders are correct. If you spread all your resources out evenly, there is no money available for large projects. You may be able to support subsistence farming or a hunter-gatherer society, but that is it.
Think of an economy as a pond. If you have no inflow or outflow, the pond stagnates, infills and ceases to exist. That is socialism in any form. For any body of water to thrive, you need water flowing in from a source from a higher elevation to add fresh oxygenated water to the system, and an outflow so that deoxygenated water will leave. That is capitalism.
By the way, I am a believer in SOCIAL PROGRAMS, programs designed to assist those in need (often using private individuals or companies who are paid from public funds), but I don't believe in SOCIALISM.
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@beefy1212 However, since they were looking for fraud, both from internal and external sources, they should have found it if it existed. Most of the things you mentioned have been examined and dismissed, in many cases by state Republicans in charge of overseeing the elections. In each case where the fraud was deemed possible the recounts verified the original results (often multiple times), sometimes giving Biden more votes. The courts, including the Supreme Court, have tossed out 59 of 60 cases filed by the Trump's team, and many of these judges were Republican (who would be doubly sure to check for fraud). In several of the states where results are questioned, Republican auditors have approved the results. Having worked with statistics, I know that you can have outliers or oddball results that don't match what you expect. It is also interesting that most, if not all, of the counties where recounts were requested have a high proportion of African-Americans in them.
I myself wondered what was going on with the election results that evening as well, until I realized that counties in the US don't have similar populations. When you saw results from rural counties (that tended to vote Republican) with 2,000 votes compared to ones from urban areas (that tended to vote Democrat) containing 20,000 votes, it started to make sense. Also, it took longer to count the urban votes, hence the flip at the end of the evening.
But I will have to disagree with you on Trump and many of the Republicans. "By their acts shall ye know them". They are trying to toss out the election results because they are unfavorable to them. They want to retain power and promote their agenda, regardless of the cost to democracy in the US. Even retired Republican politicians and statesmen don't support them. In fact it is interesting that several retiring Republican Senators and Representatives have spoken out against what is going on, but didn't say a word while they held office. I once commented to my colleagues at the lunch table back when the Tea Party first formed that they were the type of people who would trample all over the US Constitution and Bill of Rights to "save them". I said this because I could see these people were self-righteous and self interested. My colleagues didn't believe me then (in fact they thought I was being alarmist), I know they think otherwise now.
By the way, I am not an American.
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@beefy1212 And it is exactly this sort of response that lead to Japan going from being a democracy to a militaristic police state in just 15 years. If you don't know the history, it all started with patriotic societies forming in the 1920s. Patriotic junior army officers belonging to these organizations took a dislike to some government policies, and assassinated (or tried to assassinate) several high ranking politicians, including the prime minister. The reaction? "Oh, they are patriots who are fighting corruption. How can we possibly imprison or execute them?" Instead of taking strong action against these insurrectionists, the courts basically let them off. The government allowed more military men into the cabinet to appease the radicals. This happened a second time, wash, rinse, repeat. By then you had hardliners in government who gradually pushed out the moderates, and presto, Manchuria, Shanghai, Marco Polo Bridge and Pearl Harbor.
Christ was right, that one needs to remove the plank from one's eye before removing the splinter from another's. The protests yesterday, and during the tallying of votes during election, were an attempt by people calling themselves "patriots" to subvert the democratic protest because the results don't agree with what they want. This cannot be allowed. If the people, legislators and legal institutions of the US turn a blind eye to this attempted coup and do not hold those responsible accountable, then the US will be heading down a similar, parallel road to the one walked by Japan in the 1920s and 1930s. And that road leads to right-wing dictatorship.
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@beefy1212 And here is the result of this filing (Source: https://ballotpedia.org/Patricia_McCullough)
Kelly v. Pennsylvania (2020)
On November 21, 2020, a group of state Republican officials, candidates, and voters filed suit in the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court, alleging that the state law allowing all voters to cast their ballots by mail violated the state constitution. The plaintiffs asked the court either to order election officials "to certify the results of the election based solely on the legal votes" or to direct "that the Pennsylvania General Assembly choose Pennsylvania's [presidential] electors."[3]
On November 25, 2020, Judge Patricia McCullough ordered election officials to temporarily halt "any further action to perfect the certification of the results of the 2020 general election ... for the offices of President and Vice President," pending an evidentiary hearing scheduled for November 27, 2020.[4]
State officials appealed McCullough's order to the state supreme court. On November 28, 2020, the state supreme court ruled unanimously to vacate McCullough's order and dismiss the case with prejudice. In its unsigned opinion, the court wrote the following:[5]
“ The want of due diligence demonstrated in this matter is unmistakable. Petitioners filed this facial challenge to the mail-in voting statutory provisions more than one year after the enactment of Act 77. At the time this action was filed on November 21, 2020, millions of Pennsylvania voters had already expressed their will in both the June 2020 primary election and the November 2020 general election and the final ballots in the 2020 general election were being tallied, with the results becoming seemingly apparent. Nevertheless, petitioners waited to commence this litigation until days before the county boards of election were required to certify the election results to the Secretary of the Commonwealth. Thus, it is beyond cavil that petitioners failed to act with due diligence in presenting the instant claim. Equally clear is the substantial prejudice arising from petitioners’ failure to institute promptly a facial challenge to the mail-in voting statutory scheme, as such inaction would result in the disenfranchisement of millions of Pennsylvania voters.[6] ”
Sean Parnell, a Republican congressional candidate who was a party to the lawsuit, said he and the other plaintiffs would appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. On December 1, 2020, the plaintiffs petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to temporarily block the state supreme court's order pending appeal. However, the plaintiffs subsequently withdrew this application, and on December 2, 2020, they petitioned the state supreme court to stay its decision pending a determination by the U.S. Supreme Court on whether it would take up the case. The state supreme court declined to stay its decision on December 3, 2020.[7][8][9][10][11]
In light of the state supreme court's December 3, 2020, order, the plaintiffs again petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the state supreme court's ruling. Associate Justice Samuel Alito, the justice assigned to consider emergency applications from the Third Circuit (which contains Pennsylvania), directed the defendants to respond to the plaintiffs' filing by 9 a.m. on December 8, 2020. Alito referred the matter to the full court, which, on December 8, 2020, declined to take up the case. The court made its decision without noted dissent.[12]
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My comment: I read both the filing and the judges comments. In short, the plaintiffs had a full year and two prior elections to file this document after Section 77 was passed. Instead, they waited until the 2020 Presidential election and AFTER preliminary counts indicated Trump had lost. So they were attempting to use this as an attempt to overthrow an election they now considered they had lost due to mail-in votes. In short, it is a spurious court filing made under dubious circumstances, which the presiding judge, the state supreme court and the US supreme court threw out. Had this been filed in 2019, it would have been a different matter.
In addition, close reading of the original voting law (or one of its amendments) indicated that people could vote in absentia due to illness. Although this would be stretching the original intent of Pennsylvania's voting law, a highly contagious pandemic could be construed as an illness, as the law as I read it, rather quickly I will add, didn't specify to whom the illness affected. The wording left it somewhat up to interpretation. Although, if I was a judge considering such a wide definition and usage of the original phrasing, I might have concerns about setting a precedent that could be misused at a later date.
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I think Sutton's biggest problem, like many intellectuals, is that he ignores base human nature. All these companies were basically looking at all these markets with dollar signs in their eyes. Yes, they funded the Bolsheviks, Nazis, etc., but it was out of blind greed, not a conspiracy. All they saw were new markets to exploit, ethics be damned. It was rather like the Chinese Nationalist generals who, immediately after WW2, sold a lot of the equipment the Americans gave them to the Chinese Communists. It's amazing how stupid people get when they see a way to make a profit. If that weren't the case, we wouldn't have Ponzi schemes, conmen selling the Brooklyn Bridge (multiple times), the Bre-X scandal, etc.
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@michael boultinghouse That could be a yes or no, depending on events, timeline and motive. Suez Crisis, yes, I agree this was a last gasp of British and French gunboat diplomacy. Kuwait, I would say no because Saddam walked into a trap of his own making. Second Gulf War, yes, but Saddam opening his mouth and putting both feet in up to his neck didn't help any pleas of innocence he might have had. One has to take these on a case by case basis, and not make blanket judgements. Even then we don't necessarily know enough facts to make a good judgement. I will freely admit that I could be wrong on my thoughts on these events. But will reiterate that, in some events in the Middle East, I do agree with you.
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Lend-Lease is a complicated issue, to be sure. I definitely agree with TIK in most of his summary on the topic. I do remember an account in "Enemy at the Gates" of a Russian soldier commenting on the boost in his moral when, after crossing the Volga from Stalingrad, he received a can of American spam, and realized that other nations were helping the Soviet Union fight the war. In general, Lend-Lease would have had no impact in 1941 and early 1942 (as the supply system was only being established, and the Allies were still gearing up themselves). During 1942 it might have contributed somewhat by providing that small edge in equipment that the Soviet Union needed to win engagements and hold positions they might have otherwise lost. Given that Soviet Victory during the Stalingrad campaign sometimes rested on a knife's edge, even a little assistance to the Red Army may have helped tip the scales (even if it was by causing greater attrition of German forces). Later, in 1943-1945, the addition of a large number of American trucks more than likely increased the Red Army's mobility, giving them the ability to conduct deep penetrations of German lines. American radios would have provided greater command and control, making the fighting units much more effective. In addition, it would be interesting to see if a large proportion of the petroleum products sent to the Soviet Union was in the form of high octane fuel, which would have improved the performance of the Red Air Forces' aircraft (much like shipments of high octane to Britain in 1940 gave the RAF a slight edge in the Battle of Britain). Also, providing an additional 10%s worth of equipment to an army or air force is still a boost to ones ability to fight. Overall, although it did not have a substantial impact initially, from the time of Kursk onward, Lend-Lease gave the Red Army the ability to strike deeper and faster into German held territory than they would have been able to do otherwise without motorized infantry and towed artillery. As TIK concluded, this likely ended the war 1-3 years sooner, and made it somewhat less costly for the Soviet Union than it might otherwise have been.
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Another book that is quite good for reading about the Western Desert is W.G.E. Jackson, 1975, "The Battle for North Africa". By the way, regarding a history degree, the issue is that one often becomes "ossified" in your thinking. Having worked with a number of researchers with Ph.D.s (in biology, not history), I have found that the process for getting a degree tends to make these people willing to defend their point of view "to the death". It is, after all, what they have to do when defending their thesis. Problem is, it can lead to severe tunnel vision, something I have seen on repeated occaisions. Try disagreeing with a Ph.D. when you only have a B.Sc. Lots of fun! Fortunately, there are enough people out there like TIK who thoroughly research things and can make their opinions heard. Keep up the good work TIK.
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