Comments by "James the Other One" (@jamestheotherone742) on "TIKhistory" channel.

  1. #1. Don't sit around watching Utube clips about being productive. :0
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  2.  @slavicemperor8279  Yeah, how dare they resist collective rape and pillage for the greater good of the Moscow Soviet.
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  3.  @slavicemperor8279  And sabotaged by Russians both before, during, and after the Soviet era.
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  4. Rodimtsev: "We don't have enough rifles." Chuikov: "Don't worry, there are plenty of them lying around."
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  5. Nations don't have friends, only interests. Finland wasn't in the Axis because it was not a party to the Tripartite Pact.
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  6. They never even tried. Even where populations were initially friendly and supportive, the Germans went out of their way to alienate and victimize. This is a not-insignificant reason why they lost the war. Surly oppressed people are not particularly productive and a lot of troops were tied down garrisoning and suppressing the occupations.
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  7. I've oft wondered at what point, if ever, Hitler ever thought, "Well, I sure screwed this up."
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  8. They were emancipated from human rights and decency.
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  9. Negotiations (that did not happen) would not have likely have resulted in a battlefield cease-fire that would have effected the tactical situation. re: Finland and the Winter War. The Soviets pushed just as hard while they were negotiating a treaty, in fact they used it as pressure to get the Finns to give in. All the "negotiations" were was a message to the Western Allies to get off their asses and open a Western front.
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  10.  @twirlipofthemists3201  The Germans didn't need to invade England. They just needed to starve it into submission and successfully blockade it from shipping and interdict its airpower.
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  11. With air superiority and ultimately supremacy, the Luftwaffe could have bombed the RN into oblivion and destroyed the ports that England depended on to not starve much less support the war effort. The BoB was a close run thing even when Hitler and his generals were easily distracted.
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  12. ​ @Alexandroslav  But "Archangel" sounds better and "prettier" in English than "Arkhangelsk", which frankly sounds like gibberish to their ears. ;0
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  13. When you are rationalizing Hitler and the Nazis, you take whatever meager leverage you have.
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  14. Well in this one he's pretty much hitting his critics over the head with the pan.
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  15. Its too bad not much of the tactical level detail of this battle has been preserved (or was even recorded). It would be interesting to see how the battalions and even companies down to individual tanks maneuvered and fought considering how dynamic it was.
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  16. "Gang activity"? WTF? You're an idiot . Or worse a Russian troll.
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  17. Himmler styled them as "elite" the SS officers and troops thought of themselves (were indoctrinated) as "elite". The rest of the Wehrmacht thought they were pikers. No they really did stuff like that. The reason why they had such high casualties is because the really did believe the "Ubermensch" BS they had been fed. So when they were told to charge that machine gun! They charged that machine gun and died in droves doing it. And they kept at it all the way to the bitter end.
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  18. Its in the socalist handbook.
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  19. There was also that carefully nurtured cult of personality. Even after he died and his naughty stuff was denounced, still served the Soviet hierarchy because it/he legitimized their authority.
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  20. See original video where when you decouple the economic theory from the political/social, the two become very similar. Both subordinate the individual and society to the State. How they went about that was different. The Bolsheviks destroyed the bourgeois and private sector, the Fascists incorporated them.
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  21. By '43 the US was scrapping the bottom of the barrel for officers. Not so much from losses, but from expansion. Pretty much anyone who could sign his own name and didn't drool to often would make promotion if he were lucky enough to have good NCOs to carry him along and keep him out of trouble.
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  22. You ought to redo this video with your honed narration and editing super powers. The subject (and your writing) deserve it.
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  23. That's why he said it was a "spectrum".
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  24.  @TheImperatorKnight  Like you said in the monologue, Spain was... complicated. Few of the actors lined up with our modern categorization of ideology or motive.
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  25.  @askeladden7930  An explosive. unstable until mixed into a stabilizer like dynamite. Its how Alfred Novel got his fortune.
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  26.  @freedomordeath89  "Are you seriously JUSTIFYING and supporting terror tactics and warcrimes?" That is not what he is saying at all. And you are incorrect. The brutal Nazi occupations were terrifyingly effective at controlling local civilian populations who's fighting age males often outnumbered the German garrisons tens of thousands to one. For each of your examples of Medieval sieges that didn't go so well, you can find a bunch where it did work. You don't have to worry about public opinion when you've put the whole population to the sword and sacked and burned the place. The (your) morality doesn't matter because we are talking about real events who's morality was entirely the context of the time. Someone with a "phd in history" ought to know this.
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  27. That's pretty optimistic for a Russian.
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  28. The Universe likes its little ironies. Of course its not all the Nazis fault. Human nature (on all sides) also contributed to the current tragedy that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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  29.  @klausbrinck2137  Your gibberish is not only a rather inaccurate glossing over of the truth, it is also not related to your post, my post, nor the original post of this thread. Even after the revolution, Stalin's USSR was directly and intentionally responsible for the deaths of millions of its own citizens. The "unsurpassed rise in living standards and industry" in the Soviet Union was more that they could simply borrow and steal the technology that already existed in the world, and in fact received a lot of help from its erstwhile "enemies" in the west in doing so.
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  30. Churchill is considering the global geo-strategic picture, not only of the immediate but also what the post-war political environment is going to look like. Where as the generals are only concerned with fighting their battles (and looking good/brilliant to history). That is why he has to constantly badger and goad them into action.
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  31. Because it was never an important front in WWII most histories don't even mention what happened there. Misery and death was the common theme everywhere the Nazis occupied.
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  32. Anyone can rationalize anything. If you thought/been told they were evil, you'd shoot her too.
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  33. You're an idiot. At the time of the Crusades, everyone was a "terrorist and babykiller" by today's standards. That is just how they did things. Even today guess what happens when you go to war? People get terrorized and babies get killed. Are you sure you are on the right channel troll?
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  34. The victor writes the jokes... or something like that.
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  35.  @freedomordeath89  He was providing the context of the time period not making judgement of them. You know the objectivity they are supposed to teach first year history students. The Germans lost WWII for a lot of reasons, being barbaric was only one of them. For a source of garrison ratios, go look up the populations of the occupied countries. Hint: They are in the tens of millions. A couple hundred thousand doesn't go that far. No, the Nazis really did rationalize the rapin' and plliagin' to themselves. LIkewise, the Vikings, the Crusaders, and every other Caesar, king and petty warlord throughout human history really did rationalize it as being morally reasonable, or they didn't because it was just an accepted part of their culture that they are entitled to kill and take from the "them". Ie: "just business". I guess you didn't get very much from that correspondence course art history degree eh? Here is a tip to save yourself further embarrassment, sit on your hands more when you are in the comments section of serious historical studies channels.
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  36. The beginning of the 20th century was pretty much a complete dark mark on European history. The entire continent just went completely bat-s#it crazy.
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  37. @12:40 "colloquial Russian" Something that in English would get you demonitized on YT.
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  38.  @Paciat  That is not true. Germany and the USSR had a separate treaty, otherwise the Soviets would have been obliged to assist Italy, and things with Japan would have been... awkward. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was purely a temporary convenience for both sides. They had zero sociopolitical commonality.
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  39.  @sorsocksfake  No. he was just a POS coward that didn't/couldn't bring himself to throw "his boys" into the battle. Yes he wiley persevered his force, but at the cost of a lot of blood to other units. If the Dash to the Wire had resulted in a British route, he would probably have been one of the principle malfactors blamed for the defeat. Luckily for him, his sandbagging was glossed over in the afterglow the Brit general staff felt after having finally "beaten" Rommel.
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  40.  Pedro Kantor  Ah... no. There was absolutely no illusions in the US, UK, or anywhere in Western Europe that the USSR was anything but another version of the same totalitarianism that had just been defeated in Germany. The "honeymoon" of the Allies victory ended mere months after the war as the West watched the Soviets install puppet communist governments and the Red Army rape and pillage the former Axis territory.
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  41.  Pedro Kantor  that not even revisionism, thats like... delusional.
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  42. Real free markets don't exist for the same reason real communism (or even socialism) doesn't exist. They are ideological concepts and theory that can be applied to the real world but don't actually function acceptably because of human nature. People will cheat and game both systems without compromises and exceptions.
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  43.  @mat_j  the triggered left-winger where the historical reality offends their political correctness and revisionism.
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  44.  @pathocrat  said, "The Soviets put a huge emphasis on science and technology..." Is not economic growth. And didn't do squat with it beside try (and fail) to keep up with the West. Even at the end they couldn't provide decent living standards because they were too busy making everyone (except the Party) equally poor and miserable. Zero-sum.
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  45. If Stalin had lost his nerve while the Germans were at the gates of Moscow and feared losing everything and/or thought "peacing out" of the war was the only way to save the rest of the USSR, he might have. This is what the West feared would happen, because then Hitler could devote more resources to starving out England and the Mediterranean theater.
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  46.  @WilliamJones-Halibut-vq1fs  Always "great" to hear from the Nazi apologists.
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  47. Soviet Socialist: We also get to decide what you deserve to receive, whenever we feel like you should receive it.
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  48.  @pietersteenkamp5241  So you are saying you are old and dumb? Or just that you bought into the lie of Marx way back when and your ego (or something) won't let you admit that you were wrong? Well bless your heart.
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  49. If you think that is bad you should try playing squad leader IRL.
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  50.  @klausbrinck2137  When you are starting pretty much near the stone age of serfdom, rising to only 20 or 30 years behind the "developed world" isn't saying much. Both the USSR and PRC had reoccurring shortages and famines AFTER they implemented socialism, the Soviets because they spent all their resources trying (and failing) to compete militarily with the US, and the Chinese only became prosperous after they embraced capitalism. Yes, your idiotic ignorance is showing.
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  51. The irony... All of you are conflating the separate characteristics of political and economic philosophy.
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  52.  @xmeda  The USAAF and RAF in 1945 were not the Luftwaffe either. B-29s (then B-36s) and P-51s and Meteors (the P-80s). The Soviets would have had a large airforce and fuel for about a week.
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  53.  @mat_j  has the irony. I guess you don't understand or are ignorant of the fact that such things were so common in history that "being put to the sword" is a shorthand phrase for it.
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  54. Perhaps you should actually think about what I wrote. The answer to your question is contained within it.
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  55. No, I was pretty specific. English not your first language?
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  56. As opposed to just killing them outright?
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  57. Sometimes someone is bad or "evil" regardless of what your perspective (or bias) is. War often gives a rational to commit evil actions, and the war between Germany and the Soviets gave it in spades to both sides. TIK is trying to express the utter ruthlessness and barbarity with which both sides prosecuted this war that is very hard for contemporary people to even comprehend. If any thing I find that he is down playing the very subjective "value judgements". He could do an entire video on just the atrocities and what we would call "war crimes" committed during this battle alone, much less the entire war.
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  58.  @shakaD88  And then things went down hill from there as production dropped off and the accumulated screwups of central planning manifested themselves, wide spread pollution, killing the Aural Sea, until the whole thing rolled over and died in 1991 and people were once again starving in the street. And do I need to bring up China? Cambodia? assorted socialist hell-holes in Africa and S. America? Venezuela today? The best memes always have a ring of truth.
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  59.  De Profundis  Yeah I've had that happen to me as well while making defenses of minorities or making perfectly reasonable arguements but using the wrong "keywords". The AIs still don't understand context.
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  60. It started out as a crony capitalistic arrangement. One of the main reasons why the NAZIs won out over the sundry other parties was that they reached accommodation with the Industrialists and wealthy elites instead of seeking their destruction and replacement as what happened in Russia. But as Hitler et. al. accumulated power, they quickly subordinated them. They were just as "state controlled".
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  61. You only have to suck less than the other guy.
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  62.  @edvard8449  The US is a hell of a lot more socialist than the founding fathers intended.
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  63.  @pietersteenkamp5241  Who is indoctrinated here? Nice talk. Take your pills.
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  64. Those are the Italian subtitles.
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  65.  @ITILII  Because communism/socialism is extremely inefficient and does not produce innovation, so the only thing it can export for (lol) capital is raw materials, basic goods , and food. When you are a totalitarian autocrat, you don't care of some (or alot) of the people you don't like starve as long as you get more money to stay in power.
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  66.  @alexalexin9491  The CIA doesn't troll. It collects.
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  67.  @infantjones  Provide one novel technology that the Soviet Union created? Just one. The rest of your post is bass-ackwards revisionism and rationalization. You should get a refund from where every you got your education, assuming you paid anything more than the time you spent in would-be communist chatrooms.
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  68.  @infantjones  Other than everything you state is completed decoupled from reality? The growth of GDP and productivity to both the USSR and PRC post WWII came from primarily the "peace dividend" and baby-boom, but directly from the mechanization of agriculture and the use of modern farming techniques, NOT the "genius of communism", which actually stifled growth relative to the West.
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  69. @2:24 "if you have a understanding of basic economics..." which excludes all socialists. @4:00 Italians are lovers not fighters. ;)
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  70.  @ivanmunoz9267  Feudalism was a sociopolitical system. You are making the same error most make about socialism which is both political and economic. There is no reason why feudalism could not also incorporate most any flavor of economics into it the way it did religion as well. In fact, it did as the entire feudal system was a "unified state control" of the means of production until well into the Renaissance, namely the agricultural production where each level of the hierarchy levied taxes demanded of it by the next higher level. So a feudal keynesian (ie; "fair ruler" ) would raise taxes in good times and war, and then lower them during drought. etc.
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  71. Its one thing when you are presenting a perspective on military historical events. But when you are intentionally kicking over anthills of ideology and accepted dogma...
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  72.  @EstParum  You have to remember to put air holes in your tin-foil hat when you make it cover your whole head.
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  73.  @wititorac  By not having Barbarossa draining resources away of course.
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  74. Less a civil war more the break down of civil order. Many of the Italian "partisans" were just criminal gangs with only vague political identities who were preying on their fellow Italians as much as the Germans. Mussolinin wasn't caught and killed by an ambush, he was caught at a roadblock the "partisans" were extorting tolls from.
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  75.  @pathocrat  But yet Germany, Japan, and other countries knocked down as far as the USSR managed to "catch up" to the US and enjoy comparable living standards. But I guess an apologist for socialism has gotta make up excuses and find his silver linings where he can because no one exploits and abuses the masses better.
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  76.  @pathocrat  Oh and go watch the video again. There was economic growth after the war, but that isn't what TIK was referring to, it was the difference between pre-revolutionary or pre-war agricultural output and efficiency, which was a fraction (that means smaller) than in the West or even compared to Imperial Russia. They didn't surpass that until well after WWII.
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  77.  @vantuz8264  Blurted: " UK, Germany weren't knocked down in terms of economics as much as USSR. Japan wasn't knocked down at all." HAHAHaahahhahahahahahha! I love the internet. Its so hilarious.
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  78. ​ @keyboardwarrior9258  The psychopathic and sociopathic are incapable of making moral judgements and distinctions. So most of the time, yes, it doesn't even occur to them, or they decide to "be evil" or to commit evil acts in the name of whatever cause they've latched on to because they lack empathy and don't really understand what it means. So TIK's statement is still true.
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  79.  @freedomordeath89  the Dunning–Kruger effect is strong with you. Not only do you not understand history, you don't even understand my post. Take your pills.
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  80.  benvolio mozart  Except if the Germans had refused the trap and the war of attrition and kept biting off whole chunks of the Soviet Army that had been their success to this point. I donno as @ Nicholas Conder wrote, historically the die was already cast not only by the mentality of German leadership (Hitler) but also the limitations of their logistics. But this was really the last time they could have made this change, and the shock of losing an entire corps (for the first time?) could have been that impitus.
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  81. "All of which makes me think that Nazi foreign policy was inherently flawed from the start" If by "flawed" you mean pathologically psychotic, then yes.
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  82. Yes, the Entente engineered it so that Central Europe would remain weak and divided for the foreseable future. But they did too good of a job. The 20s and 30s were full of ethnic strife and small wars all over the place, and this chaos is what allowed extremists like Hitler and the Nazi party to come to power in German and easily sweep up the remains of Austria-Hungary into the Reich. Opps.
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  83.  @pietersteenkamp5241  I see you don't know your Russian Revolution history very well. Or pretty much every single implementation of socialism that has been attempted. But thats okay. Lots of ignorant people these days. You have lots of company.
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  84.  @infantjones  Nothing you list here is a "novel technology" invented in the USSR all of them were concepts and inventions from elsewhere. Or evolutionary developments of the same. More wishful thinking. Or just plain lies.
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  85. Even when you know the outcome and have read many books on the subject, TIK's presentation is still very entertaining.
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  86. 3 spambots disliked this video.
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  87. TIK describes himself as a "classical liberal". Web search what that means. By today's standards where the left and right mainstreams are just different flavors of stateist authoritarianism , yes, he's a Libertarian.
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  88.  @Blazo_Djurovic  They were never intended to eliminate the pocket. They were there to keep attriting them and preventing them from making a breakout or evacuated via sealift, which if the Red Army had left them unmolested, they might have been able to build the strength for.
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  89.  @mat_j  has to be trolling. No one can be this stupid...
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  90.  @vantuz8264  Do you have one that goes like: "If you don't get the joke, then you are probably its fool"?
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  91. ​ @vantuz8264  Your "points" were completely divorced from reality. So no. Other than advise you to go read an actual history book and not neo-socalist revisionist and stalinism apologist web sites.
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  92.  @vantuz8264  I don't see how that is at all relevant to the discussion at hand, but that is a nice little strawman you built for yourself.
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  93.  @vantuz8264  Except it IS the miracle of capitalism. The reconstruction of the Post-war world could have included the USSR and its sphere of influence. But Joe Stalin was an evil asshole who alienated the West and picked a path of conflict and competition for his country by extension, the entire world for the rest of the 20th century. So they were left grubbing around in highly efficient collectivized mediocrity.
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  94.  @tomsemmens6275  Bones in the ground don't care. Your ancestor and all the others are now separated from us by 77+ years of time and space. It is more important that we remember them as they were and what they did as a culture. And that is why things like TiK's YT channel is so important. But yes, It's great that there are cemeteries that are protected. Hopefully they are still there.
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  95.  @freedomordeath89  Did I say that? No, I really didn't. Keep digging.
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  96.    Turks of the ruling classes from this time period would disagree.
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  97.  @shaeemsanjide5476  Not sure what your post has to do with my post, but good try!
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  98. @ Twirlip Of The Mists: It was only the "worst" because it failed. Far more horrific things have been carried out successfully by "evil" leaders/peoples in history. The Roman Empire, Mongol Invasions, etc. etc.
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  99. Or you didn't understand his point.
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  100. The regular Soviet units had their own political officers and "rear security" troops who would provide "motivation" to the infantry. That is what is being portrayed in "Enemy at the Gates" . Were the 10th SS Panzer that got shot up at Nimajen infantry or support troops? I can't recall off hand, but a division has a lot of people who aren't shooters, clerks, mechanics, etc. They would break or "unauthorized withdrawal" and not know how to react to contact.
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  101. When it fit the needs of the state (or at least the whim of whatever bureaucrat who was given the authority to decide whom was who). The Nazis weren't exclusive to Jews in their mania to eliminate, anyone else handy also went to extermination. Gays, the mentally ill, criminals, etc. I am sure that more than a few were "found" and marked for death because those that did so stood to gain, for the state or on the side for themselves. The Soviets (and later Chinese) did similarly, although the death tolls were as much incompetence as malice. And to be completely fair, the ol' capitalist West has its share of blood for profit on its hands too, Colonialism etc. Pretty much the most absolute power is life and death after all. And you know what they say power does.... Thats why I am always baffled that anyone who knows even the briefest of world history or understands human nature believes in Socialism. But perhaps such knowledge is rare.
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  102. You should ask folks who have lived under socialism how great their social contract turned out in reality. That is and always will be the fatal problem with socialism, it can never live up to what is promised. You have to try very hard to pretend that there was a difference between the Soviet's Global Socialist Revolution and the Imperialism of the age before. Both were about accumulating power, the "All domestic policy serves foreign policy". But at least Imperialists and Capitalists are honest about it instead of selling a lie of rights and equality. When the reality is all the common people did was trade one master for another.
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  103. OTOH- Those millions of men, fuel, supplies and transport (trains, rolling stock etc.) could have been better utilized in Ag., esp. in the occupied West where they would have been a hell of a lot more motivated than the French farmers to produce and ship food back home. The German Army was never self-sufficient on its campaign in the East. It was always a drain on German resources of all types, even when you subtract the pillaging, er... I mean foraging. Either which way,,, the National Socialist's mis-governance of Germany doomed them to eventual failure regardless the even greater misadventures of its foreign policy. What is worse than a socialist? A half-assed social capitalist.
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  104.  @jussim.konttinen4981  More just disillusioned by the flaws in socialism and in human nature. Today he would be considered a conservative.
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  105.  @infantjones  Really? The aeroplane. The transistor. Jet propulsion. The Internet. Various plastics. Whole elements and alloys. You inhabit a strange world that seems like a museum to Soviet socialism. BTW- "quoting" to avoid sending the person you replying to a notification so that your ridiculous posts won't be refuted (easily) is intellectually cowardly.
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  106.  @Paciat  From your link; "With the rise of the Nazis to power in January 1933, the ideological gap between fascist Germany and the communist Soviet Union became too large and the fighter school at Lipetsk was closed on 15 September 1933."
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  107. I find it tragic that anyone who has received even a primary education does not understand this.
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  108. Yes. The US and all of Western civilization is racing to embrace authoritarianism and socialism faster than the former socialists are running from it....
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  109. I doubt it was "the" Elon Musk, since he complained about a power cut. I pretty sure Elon has one of his Power Walls installed at his place.
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  110. @19:40 Its worse than that, the Entente powers intentionally drew (or had them drawn) the borders of the successor states to build in ethnic tensions and de-cohesion. Its the same trick they used in the Middle East, drawing national boundaries between tribal and Islamic sects to set them against each other within their own boundaries. Time ghost's "Great Wars" and "Between the Wars" goes into exquisite detail of these shenanigans.
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  111.  @roberthansen5727  And Germany couldn't possibly defeat France in six weeks either. Or catch the allies flatfooted in Scandinavia. Much like on the continent, most of the RN's supremacy was in obsolete and vulnerable surface combatants with the tactical and strategic thinking to go with it. Luckily for the RN, the KM brass on up to Hitler were even more outdated in their thinking than they were. So no. If we are playing the "what if" game, and if we presume that conquering England was a priority to Hitler and cronies, then everything you think you know about the BoB and Sea Lion would be different. The historical German war machine was designed and geared for a short, tactical continental war because that was their plan all the way back to when the general staff were navel gazing right after the 1918 armistice. They were ill equipped for amph. ops. and strategic airpower on purpose. But that does not mean that they couldn't have been. The money spent on those useless battleships and getting ready to stick their hands into the hornet's nest of Russia could have bought a lot of uboats, landing ships, and bombers.
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  112.  @roberthansen5727  Oh and take your pills.
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  113.  @davidlogan4965  Why couldn't a monarchist support Keynesian economic theory?
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  114.  @nickhambly8610  koo koo kachoo. Perhaps you should consider how you are perceived outside of the echo chamber of your own head.
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  115. Those same people probably believe the Earth is flat so....
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  116. The only thing worse than socialism is malicious socialism...
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  117. Do you think Ivan in the GAZ factory really had a say as to what the factory was producing, how it was producing and how it was distributing it's products?
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  118. Boy you guys sure have a high bar for who counts as "socialist". lol
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  119. Blitzkrieg rolls off the English tongue easier. Poland was the first, imperfect try. France was the technique perfected. Russia as biting off more than any strategy could handle.
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  120.  @ajsimo2677  Not really. Greece was an ally of England and it would have been a dangerous base of operations right next to Italy and the Romanian oil fields. Even if Italy hadn't tried its fumbled invasion, Hitler would have had to take it anyway.
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  121.  @pietersteenkamp5241  Please tell us all about the "tremendous moderation of popular democracy" in the USSR, the PRC, and most any other country who's governement embraced Marxist Socialism. This will be amusing.
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  122.  @Damatis  Do you actually know how little the Bolshevik soviets or the PRC''s "people's committee" were actually comprised of the actual workers, instead of just a new crop of bureaucrats (ie: the low-profile bourgeoisie )? And how little rights and freedoms you actually had as a member subject to the whim of a local soviet committee? Or are you just an internet socialist filled to your eyeballs with BS wishful thinking you've read?
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  123.  @pietersteenkamp5241  Agaain with the philosophical rhetorical navel gazing. The two examples of "socialist democracies" were yours. Not mine. History and human nature proves that your notions are wrong, just as all "socialist thinkers". It simply doesn't work. Socialism ALWAYS devolves into authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Just as communism always devolves into anarchy and disillusion. The USSR and PRC made "radical progress" because they started rebuilding their nations from near pre-historic level, surrounded by an advanced world that they could "borrow" (steal) technology from and bypass the entire Industrial Age development. And they did this at tremendous cost to the individuals that were forced to sacrifice themselves "for the good of the State".
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  124. It would be a refreshing change up to the evils of capitalism for a while. lol
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  125.  @mat_j  Yes its very amusing to watch you flail away trying to fixate on the word "crusader" to express your obvious anti-Christian and who knows what other issues you have.
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  126.  @vantuz8264  Ask yourself why there was such "outside help" to be had.
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  127.  @derekbaker3279  Oh look more neo-socialist revisionism and rationalization.
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  128.  @derekbaker3279  Both are equally appropriate. You and "Van Tuz" should look up remedies for "cognitive bias".
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  129.  @nedkelly4825  There are hundreds of millions of innocent people alive today who would disagree with you.
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  130. More like a historical political comparative analysis.
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  131.  @freedomordeath89  No, just smarter and more educated than you. Thanks for point out that you are also a bigot in addition to an idiot.
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  132. I would put money on "llib " being one of the authors considering how similarly confused its posts are.
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  133. Have you been to Euro-Disney lately?
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  134. I lost it @0:00. The only reason why I clicked is that I'm doing other stuff and I can listen to TIK, and I wanted to listen to him dismantle someone's idiotic house of cards.
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  135. Because reasons... that you could figure out yourself if you had any intellectual curiosity instead of making inane comments.
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  136.  @orclover2353  Yep. The Germans only chance was for Barbarossa to be a "knock out sucker punch" that defeated the Red Army and destroyed to Soviet government before it could react and adapt to bring its vastly superior resources to bear. This failed in mid '42 and it was all down hill for them from there. This was recognized by the German generals in '43 and why they plotted to kill Hitler and sue (coup?) for peace.
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  137. @8:00 Hitler was preparing for a perpetual war. And he wanted it ASAP. So he and the generals started it with the "army they had" thus lots of infantry, horses, and trains. And their tail never caught up. Also remember "those darn kinder" that were into all those new fangled aeroplanes and tanks and stuff, were still in the minority in the late thirties. You can see this in the French campaign, where the old infantry generals were thinking in the old time frames while Guderan and co. were racing forward with the armor.
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  138.  @1210alpha  Yeah, They essential did lay new track all over, both in German gauge and in repairing the Russian ones that were torn up by the Soviets during their retreats and both that were constantly being bombed and shot up by both sides. The RR engineers (on both sides but mostly German) were the hardest working folks on the Eastern front.
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  139.  @TheImperatorKnight  Balkans would be more interesting... all of those campaigns were inter-related.
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  140.  @CSSVirginia  The folly of man is magnified when viewed through the lens of history.
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  141. Oh you should really read up on the Mongol Horde, or even the Roman Empire. They make the Nazis look like choir boys.
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  142. LOL. Thanks, now my brain has dug that song up and is playing it on repeat in my head.
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  143. The Germans incorporated the existing socio-economic structures into its nationalization instead of completely destroying and recreating them. That is the only difference between the two. The average German citizen in the late 30s and early 40s, when they were ignoring the evil around them, thought things were great much like your average citizen in a modern socialist democracy too.
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  144.  @JammKhon  Don't pay your property or income taxes and you'll see how little private property protection you really have. Authoritarianism is a key trait of socialism.
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  145. of logic?
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  146. There would just be different titles the asshats wore. The Human Condition is a tragedy.
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  147. ""civilizing" the natives & spreading the Bible" Not really a lie. That is exactly what they did. Few except for the missionaires that rode along ever claimed they also weren't going for fame & fortune.
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  148. No one makes you watch his socio-economic rants.
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  149. Thats what you get for having too many pans in the fire. ;-P
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  150.  @bernardobiritiki  I see you didn't make the mental leap... Corporations exist to maximize shareholder value. Be that stock holders or citizens or (most often) the upper ranks of a bureaucratic hierarchy. There are plenty of non-profit corporations that exist for reasons other than making a profit.
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  151. lol. gratuitous upload shall receive the gratuitous thumbs up.
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  152.  @Userext47  The Monarchies WERE the State, or rather, what we call "The State" (government) today was the personal possession of the Monarch or their families. Take care in trying to pound contemporary round pegs in to historically square holes. This has absolutely nothing to do with the distinction between Capitalism and Socialism in a economic context. It was a big fat red herring (blackadder?). Militarizes are by nature "socialistic".
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  153.  @infantjones  I did. You. are. completely. wrong. As in your entire premise is false and scewed to a in incorrect hypothosis that doesn't exist in reality. Like for example your cheerypicked little nugget; "Soviet GDP growth was its strongest on average pre-WW2" because it went from completely deadlined zero in the chaos of the civil war to the reconstruction and reorganization of the '30s. The Russians did have a baby boom post war (a lot of it was in E. Germany and the rest of "Liberated" E. Europe. as Soviet troops enjoyed the spoils of victory) so, you are also wrong there too. You do know that the Chinese were still fighting their own civil war into the late '40s right, so their growth was delayed by a decade and then you had the cluster fuck of the "Cultural Revolution". So take your warmed over propaganda and shove it up your ass.
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  154.  @infantjones  tldr, some people have a life and don't need to prove things to the delusional on the internet. Which would be like trying to bail out an ocean with a bucket. bye bye soviet guy.
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  155.  @TheImperatorKnight  He was an idealist. He understood the promises and theoretical benefits but I think realized that you can't get there from there (the early 20th century).
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  156. No. TIK is correct, Courland wasn't evacuated on that plan because there weren't enough assets that could be devoted to it. The weather wasn't a factor.
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  157. Not very professionalish.
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  158. A prisons go, Norway's not the worst place to be. I doubt many of the troops complained to much.
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  159. No because just a few years before the Poles had handed the Soviets their heads. At the time Germany's overmatch against Poland (or France) wasn't a given.
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  160.  @joshjwillway1545  Because they managed to surrender to the side that didn't send them to a gulag to die.
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  161.  @twirlipofthemists3201  They didn't need to blockade the rest of the Empire. They just needed to cut off the head for both geopolitical and strategic (eliminate Britain as a staging point for a counter invasion). Hitler thought he could bully them into it with an air campaign. Obviously that didn't work. If the air battle had been successful, then Sea Lion might have been seriously pursued. But that didn't happen either because not only did the Brits not capitualte or collapse, they were already planning Barbarossa. Those last two were mutual causations BTW.
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  162.  @roberthansen5727  Do you have this argument saved so you can knee-jerk cut and paste it every time this topic comes up? Please try and read my post again without assuming that I am saying that the Germans could have successfully invaded England in 1940-41. I am saying that that they didn't even try.
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  163.  @johnburns4017  Split hairs much? Strategic intent from the German leadership was there in the late thirties. It guided acquisition and logistical decisions. There would have been generic "war plans" and intelligence gathering well before there were specific operational plans.
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  164.  @johnd2058  Wars are always fought on credit. Credit/debt always debases a currency.
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  165. Governments use spending in general, and deficit spending in particular, to influence and control economic activity. Obviously so in a socialist socioeconomic system, but also in a notionally capitalist free-market one. Dependency on public spending tends to grow over time which can create greater and greater deficits if economic strength is declining and/or mismanaged. So TIK's point is correct. Socialism as "government control of the means of production (economics)", predicates a government's ability to conduct deficit spending. You are incorrect about gold as well. A gold coin or simply a nugget dug out of the ground has an intrinsic value based on its mass and immutability that is uncontrolled by any authority such as a government or bank. Or rather, it is controlled by the market, and gov. and banks can only influence its value (by banning etc.) unlike fiat currencies which are "owned" and completely controlled by central banks as ONLY a medium of exchange.
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  166. Hitler didn't have any qualms about invading democratic capitalistic Poland, France, etc. etc. Hitler was elected because he promised to make "the trains run on time" ie fix all the economic problems and provide security. The Boslhiviks were just one of a whole host of threats to that (including competing nationalist socialist parties). All sides in the civil war (and into the post-war reconstruction) pillaged the countryside for food. It took many years to recover from that. Overlaying centrally planned soviets was a lot easier fit on top of the old feudal system, than suddenly emancipating the peasants and giving them ownership of the land and expecting them to become expert independent farmers overnight. The Reds were able to force (at literal gun point) collectivization and industrialization on a far quicker pace than if the (surviving) industrialists and entrepreneurs could pick up the pieces and resume a healthy economy. OTOH- Western capital would have flowed into a capitalist Russia and it would have had a strong stimulative effect to (re)build the economy, that then the government could tap to build up the defense industry the same as in Western countries. Yeah, socialism promotes totalitarianism, so a democratic Lenin, Stalin, etc. would have been much more constrained by the electorate. Even if Stalin had the authoriatrian power of Hitler in the 30s, there is no way his political career would have survived the fiasco of the Winter War, and its very unlikely he could have gotten away with the intentional famines in the South and the purges.
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  167. Wrong channel.
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  168. A squeeky high-pitch voice would have been a more accurate voice for Patton. @34:08 With the privileges of wearing the stars comes the responsibility to not screw up. That's why they make the big bucks.
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  169. Anything less that free-market capitalism just established the rate of decline of a socio-economic system.
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  170.  @davidlogan4965  You've heard of "double speak" before right?
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  171.  @n00btotale  Keynesianism gets you all of the above. And in the end only "the system" wins.
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  172.  @hendrikvanleeuwen9110  He's not joking. He just knows what he is talking about. Being "in" Stalingrad extended both the supply lines AND the German front that had to be maintained against constant Soviet pressure, making encirclement that much more likely. Being "in" what was left of the city provided no shelter protection other than lots a material with which to build bunkers and fighting positions with. Both the Northern and central army groups weathered the Russian winters "just fine", as in it all sucked equally.
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  173. Wasn't referring to him specifically. By nature of the job every general will sit on his army until he has (what he thinks) is as close to 100% chance of success as he can, if nothing else than to preserve his soldiers. An "even" or "fair" fight is the sign of a poor general (or a wargamer ;), but events (and politics) forces the issue.
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  174.  @nickhambly8610  Probably because you are posting inflammatory speculative subjects that are only tangential to TIK's subject (and completely off track of tactical military history).
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  175. Because they want to turn everyone else into socialists.
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  176. Do you think that the workers in... any socialist state to date, were ever in control of The State and there fore had any practical ownership of the means of production?
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  177. The bread in question is more like straw and sawdust bread.
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  178. You guess don't understand what " borgeoise" means.
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  179.  @YeOldVisigoth  Yeah.... no. Millions of Soviet POWs writing back home about how bad the war was going (from their perspective) would have been a propaganda and domestic morale disaster. Both sides only gave lip service to the Geneva conventions, or even human decency. It is hard for us really grasp just how brutal and inhumane the mentality of this era was.
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  180. That hinged on the axis winning the air and sea battle of the Med. Which they didn't. Which is really the reason the Afrika Korps failed. If Rommel had gotten all the men and material that went to the bottom of the Med, he could have taken Tobruk. With Tobruk, he could have taken Cairo.
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  181. @0:46 The irony of listening while fiddling with the guts of a broke down PC (HTPC), contemplating how much replacing the motherboard is going to cost...
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  182.  @wititorac  Ponder for a moment before you reply, what the Luftwaffe resources that were spent in Russia could have done to the RN in Benito's little lake.
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  183. 'Cause head explosions bump up his "viewer interaction" analytics numbers.
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  184. I still have a hard time summoning much sympathy for even the Wehrmacht (and zero for the SS etc.) . They knew full well that they had slipped the bonds of civilization.
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  185. The Snark was strong with TIK for this one.
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  186. @3:00 OTOH, simply denying Britain the Egyptian oil and the Suez would have seriously hurt their ability to fight on all fronts. And I don't think the Nazis would have hesitated for a second to grab all the petroleum products they could move regardless of the impact on the local population/economy.
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  187. We are all socialists now.
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  188. The airspace over the actual battles was a little more contested than in rear areas too.
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  189.  @oddballsok  nah. Both sides happily shot at anything that flew by.
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  190. Junkers was making and just wanted to make civilian airliners and cargo aircraft. The Nazis came in and said, "Nope".
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  191. I hope not. Stalingrad has been so done already.
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  192. ebay?
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  193.  @mahlapropyzm9180  lol. Economics 101 fail.
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  194. I don't see the contradiction that TIK points out. Donitz places a requirement of all German naval and air assets be dedicated to the sea-lift operation for it to be successful. This would not only have included blocking Soviet interdiction and preventing bombardment of the ports, but also engineering work on the ports. That was not practical, given what else was going on on other fronts and theaters, so his second quote is true. There weren't the assets, so it wasn't possible to extricate all German forces from Courland, so they did as much as they could as everything fell apart.
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  195.  @ajsimo2677  Greece had tried to remain neutral or otherwise stay out of the war, but its very unlikely that it could have escaped given its strategic location.
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  196.  @ajsimo2677  Greece was protectorate of GB as part of the Greeco-Turkish Peace of 1922. There were already a large contingent of British troops and assets in the country. Axis attack wasn't a matter of conjecture. It was coordinated premeditation on the part of Hitler and Mussolini aided and abetted by Bulgaria. If Bene hadn't been conveniently located and hadn't promised more than his army could deliver, its very likely that Germany would have kept rolling thru after it had blown thru Yugoslavia anyway. Italy was largely irrelevant other than defining the timing of the operation because of their failure.
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  197. The economy TIK is referring to is the economy of resource allocation, not the economy of trade and business. Even in command economies like the USSR, there is only so much to go around and compromises have to be made. Not even Stalin could demand more food, or tanks, or etc. than could actually be produced no matter how much money was thrown at them.
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  198.  @Peorhum  It was implied. One of the primary reasons why socialism fails is because it is highly efficient at badly allocating resources in ordinary times compared to market economies. However during crisis, it becomes an advantage. The Soviets probably would have collapsed (like the French) if it weren't for the stoicism of the people and the ability of Stalinism to take draconian measures regardless of their handicaps.
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  199.  @DavidGarcia-oi5nt  Not "boogeyman". Just "idiot".
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  200.  @Damatis  I don't see any proper sources in your post. All I see is badly written gibberish that might be anecdotes or is probably just crap you pulled out of your ass and the very same propaganda you are referring to.
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  201.  @beefy1212  I know but sometime you just want to whack an idiot troll over the head. At least he seems contained to under this one thread. Its the sad truth of any war, "good" or "bad", people get hurt and die.
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  202. @8:20 "Socialism doesn't work." Roll credits!
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  203.  @-ZETA-  There were not hundreds of millions of deaths after 1945. You can't count China (which was the aftermath of WWII and the Civil War, and the famines). Nor did the assorted Cold War hot wars around the world add up to hundreds of millions and that very likely would have occurred for other social, religous, etc. reasons. However trying to take down Stalin and Mao would have absolutely required nuking Soviet cities and committing US forces to a land campaign that had swallowed entire Japanese armies. And this would not have stamped out the idea of socialism, which has to wither in the face of reality. If it had been killed in Asia, it would have sprung up anew elsewhere there was socioeconomic tension. You know, like how it is growing in the US because people have forgotten how bad it was.
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  204. @24:00 and 30:00 on. Yeah, Turkey was actually the linchpin that the Axis need but could never get to commit to its side. This was because at the time no side was doing so well that it would be a "safe bet" or would promise what it would have wanted (restoration of the Ottoman territories). The British wouldn't because they had just wrestled said territory away from them and never really needed/wanted Turkish help. They also had a non-aggression pact with the Turks so they figured their flank was secure. The Turks and Russians are traditional enemies and regional rivals so that wasn't ever going to happen. That left the Axis, well, the Germans. But the Turks were still wary from their WWI experience as an ally of Germany, and Inonu (Turkish Pres.) did not trust Hitler (for good reason!). But they though about it during the whole war but the Germans were never in the position where "Yup, they won! Lets jump on the coat tails!" like they DID joint the Allies in 1945. It is very likely that IF the Germans hadn't gotten bogged down along the Eastern Front AND the Afrika Corp had pushed the British out of Egypt and into Asia Minor AND had promised to give them the old Ottoman Empire back, it probably would have induced the Turks to join the Axis. Tactically it would have been like another Romania had signed on, but strategically it would have had major implications. The Turks would have replaced Italians as supporting characters in the "Arabian Corps", and the Germans would have been able to attack the caucuses (and their oil fields!) directly as a pincer movement. "LIberating" Iran probably would have been easy too. Of course this ultimately would have been for naught as this probably wouldn't overcome Soviet and American manpower and material overmatch, might have even involved Turkey getting nuked in 1948 or '50 for their trouble. So wound up that discretion was the better part of valor for the Turks..
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  205. I give the rant at the end half of the video a solid 6.3. The Rag-tag circus" of the 83rd Infantry Div. is the perfect embodiment of the logistics failures of that Allied logistics staff. Besides stealing from their own side, they stole from the Germans too. War is never efficient. Simply the friction of war, the hurry up, spot shortages, not to mention the actions of the enemy, means you really can't think of "military economics" in the same way as civilian demand economics. Its also not practical. It would be an administrative nightmare to have an incentive or bonus type program. And it would get incredibly corrupted almost instantly. Also, on the frontlines, you are NOT going be able to set up competing mess facilities and let the Joes decide which one they want to go to for.... a million reasons. Stick to tanks. ;+P
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  206.  @sorzin2289  Completely wrong. First. Socialism by default compels the individual to subordinate themselves to the will of The State. How do you think that happens? It isn't by asking nicely. Capitalism is more or less voluntarily. Sometimes you are forced to volunteer because the options are shaped where you only have one choice and that means you are no long actually free market capitalism but into monopolistic or oligopolstic territory. Your guy with the bottling plant isn't/shouldn't be the only producer of bottle otherwise, guess what? You don't have capitalism. What Medicare 4 All is, is the worst of both worlds, where you are forced to participate which means the competitive efficiencies of free markets is short circuited and it guarantees that it is going to be infested with inefficiencies and corruption.
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  207.  @sorzin2289  You need to be more specific otherwise you are just jabbering. Your example only illustrate the failure of governmental regulation of capitalism not the economic system itself. But that's okay, its a common mistake. I hate to break it to you but water isn't a "human right" it is a resource and once entrained from the natural world, becomes a commodity. You have the right to access water, but you don't have the right to receive just because you are a human. If you don't believe that, then I'm gonna come over with my tanker truck and fill it from your taps leaving you with the water bill, because its my "human right".
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  208. Whut?
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  209. Demagogue "Anarchists are almost all socialists of some form, or otherwise allied with socialists. " That is even more far fetched than lumping nazis with socialists. Anarchism is the complete antithesis of socialism. Complete decentralization and diffusion of power vs. the subordination of the individual to the will of the collective and its corresponding control structures. The only reason anarchists are grouped with socialists is because they tend to be radicals and revolutionaries of the same stripe. Actually, they are more radical and have even more liberal views because anarchism is even less practical and realistic. And I say that as a libertarian (pragmatic anarchist). Fascism however falls right into goose-step with socialism quite easily.
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  210. However I use the term in the contemporary American sense. Which in turn is based upon the original "revolutionary" ideas of limited government and the rights of the individual at the founding of the United States. Actually idiots who only have a vague idea of what they are doing fills the ranks of Antifa. Socialism always becomes authoritarian for the same reason it always fails. Human nature. Anarchism is anti-capitalist for the same reason it is anti-socialist, the opposition to the concentration of wealth and power. Anarchism would be compatible (synonymous?) with communism, but sadly, neither are practical beyond the small scale at our current level of social and technological evolution. Most of the people who want to give either a go, just want to break the current system with only vague naive notions about what comes after (lots of death and misery is usually what happens). Go look up the definition of "liberal" and "conservative". Not the parties, not the political connotations. Just the English definition of the words..
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  211. You do understand the difference between communism and socialism right? Many (most) don't, thus why a self styled "anarchist" can think they are "socialist" at the same time. My "libertarianism" would have been mainstream American political thought until the 1960s. Well, probably a bit earlier, Wilson and FDR tilted the the US pretty far left. Johnson finished the deed of installing socialism in the US with the "Great Society". I'm not sure what the third paragraph is supposed to be but it comes across as vaguely racist.
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  212. Cut back on the mayo its rotting your brain. Socialism's "social ownership" means it is ownership by the government which is controlled by its bureaucracy's management and (usually not elected) leaders, not the population ("the workers"). It is closer to oligarchy than to communism. It puts resources just as far beyond the actual grasp of the proletariat as the worst imperialist capitalist system. Socialism was intended as a stepping stone to transition from a stratified, class based society to communism, but neither Stalin or Mao, or any other notional revolutionary was ever going to let go of that position and power once they had wrestled it away from the old system because... human nature. You can't get there from here. And if you could get there, you would find that it would rapidly break down and fall apart (ie: back to totalitarian socialism or worse) because... human nature again. While American laissez-faire capitalism was allowing wealthy whyte men to get wealthier, it was also leaving everyone else alone to try (or fail) to become wealthy too. All the other social inequality issues were from the tangled mess of its history and/or contemporary to the times. Don't drink so much of the red koolaide. Try some of the blue stuff every once and a while.
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  213. Nope. Its how it is/was in reality. Maybe this will help (try to keep your mayo down during this exercise); Imagine if all of America (or whatever nation-state you happen to be in) were owned by one giant corporation called "The State" and you were one of its "employees" and treated as such for everything your entire life. You get to vote on policies and rules etc. but you've only got one vote amongst the many multitudes and if you don't like it , too bad. You have to conform or disciplinary action will be taken against you. Oh and you can't quit either. That is the reality of socialism.
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  214. Communes exist on the small scale, for small communities of people who voluntarily share resources. It doesn't work when it scales up. That is the reason why the Israelis abandoned kibbutzim.
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  215. Ah.... no. No matter how much you wish for it, that is not true. Not true historically and not true philosophically. Last post on this thread to preserve "Egg Boi"s sanity. But please review this again and think about it.
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  216. So... I guess you neither read nor thought about it. Pity.
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  217. Except N. Korea IS democratic. The voters are just given only one candidate to choose from.
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  218. If Wietersheim had died in place like a good Nazi, Paulus and crew (maybe even Hitler) might have realized that they in over their heads and called the drive on Stalingrad off. This would have left them out of the trap and in the freeer ground west of the Don. As it was they blamed him for the set back and kept bulling forward.
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  219.  @TheImperatorKnight  Human being never seem to run out of reasons why they want to.
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  220. Churchill needed to preserve the empire, as its resources and the Suez were keeping them alive. D-Day, hell even Italy wasn't going to happen until the US was even in the war.
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  221. WTF?
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  222. Exactly.
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  223. Ha Ha My post got deleted. Maybe auto-deleted, or maybe Google's minders have book marked your channel TIK and manually pick off posts they disagree with gleefully. Lets try again...
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  224. Yep. Payback is a bitch.
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  225.  @DeadlycheesePeople  Collectivism requires altruism and self-sacrifice for the benefit of others. Which is why it fails, because human beings are inherently selfish. What you are thinking of is empathy. And, yes, you are otherwise correct.
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  226.  @4Bobay  Don't bother, later-day socialists and Sovietphiles are completely blind to the sins and failings their heroes committed.
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  227.  @llllib  That's not very socialist of you.
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  228. I saw that too. lol
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  229. @9:30 I bet they could have used all that ammo and fuel that went to the bottom of the Med...
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  230. @14:20 I imagine Toporani's context was in shipping oil to the Med to get it to Italy or N. Africa? The Caucuses are adjacent to the Black Sea, not the Med. There would be no need to ship it to the Med at all. If they had taken the oil fields and the naval superiority that they did get, they could have barged the oil along the coast to Ukraine or even better Romania, which would have been a much shorter trip/turn around than by overland rail. So as always, the critical failure of the Germans was in getting SQUIRRELED! into trying to take Stalin's namesake city, instead of concentrating on their strategic objective. In fact I have played this tactic a few times, The Rostov-on-Don to Stalingrad salient provides an excellent bait to draw the Soviets into attempting to cut off the offensive going South towards Azerbaijan. In this scenario the 6th Army becomes a supporting unit holding the Volga flank open, with a strong reserve to plug gaps in that hella long line, and waiting for the inevitable Uranus offensive where you cut off any spearhead that blunders along the Don. Basically Kursk in reverse.
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  231.  @jakubstanicek6726  Then you should watch the video again. The Caucasus were the strategic objective here. Stalingrad was a tactical blunder.
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  232.  @stefanb6539  I'm afraid you probably don't even rise to the level of a Pol-Pot. Stay is school kid.
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  233.  @stefanb6539  I donno, you could be a trust-fund kid at private school for all I know. So probably you just made another inane assumption.
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  234. The Freudian shoe drops...
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  235. Keep in mind that Goering was a F%ing moron.
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  236. Oh look, someone skimmed thru an online pop-sociology 101 class.
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  237.  @anyoneyousee7772  You should probably ask for a refund.
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  238. Its the attempted hair-spitting by modern-day socialists ("Stateists") to differentiate between National-Socialists and Marxist-Socialists to protect the contemporary Globalist world-view that socio-economic control concentrated in the hands of government (or just an oligopoly) is a good thing, even though it has been shown by history to be a very bad thing.
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  239.  @leooriano4542  Power corrupts etc... any government with the power to protect your rights and property has the power to take them away. And they do, all the time. And no, the "socialist" in NAZI wasn't just an exercise in branding. It was quite literally what Hitler had in mind to print over the established German/Prussian economic system. And socially, he was even more up in everyone's business as the Bolsheviks.
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  240.  @damyr  Naw, people would still find an excuse to kill each other.
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  241.  Jay Leno  haz the misogyny.
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  242. Yeah, many societies have at times totally oriented themselves on war fighting. Survival tends to be highly motivational. The only difference is that industrialization and technology allowed it to reach a scale never seen in human history before.
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  243. The air over the battle(s) was contested by the Luftwaffe, so its not as if the Red AF had completely free reign. Even on the Western Front where Allied air dominance was greater, the Germans were still able to maintain and deploy armored formations.
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  244.  @georgegordon6630  Wasn't really that small an area. You couldn't just shell randomly and air attacks were sporadic, they didn't loiter over the battlefield looking for targets because German AAA was intense and there was always the chance of getting bounced by LW fighters. Yes the Germans suffered attrition in logistics and transit, it was part of what was wearing them down and why they were constantly on the backfoot, not just the Soviet numbers.
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  245.  @georgegordon6630  Un no. I think you are misunderstanding the histories. Only armored columns could move tactically, at the point of contact. But the German army would have dried up and blown away in short order if they couldn't supply logistically with horse carts much less trucks. Much of that was done at night, but still. Most of the German war machine wasn't armored. Foot Infantry, artillery, and the whole logistics tail, etc. It wasn't "raining bombs".
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  246.  @georgegordon6630  They have every major problem. But believe whatever you want.
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  247. Patton was.... eccentric. But he was a good commander, otherwise his career wouldn't have survived the Louisiana Maneuvers, much less "The Slappening". The North Africa and Sicily campaigns built far more experienced field-grades than it broke.
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  248.  @stef1896  I didn't say Patton advanced. If there wasn't an Overlord.... there wouldn't have been a need for a great number of people.
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  249. Tigers were fine. Its the truck that was stuck.
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  250.  @llllib  The situation in Germany was very similar to the Austrian experience. The strategy of the Entente and the aims of the Versailles et.al. treaties.
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  251.  @llllib  I wasn't speaking of the Hapsburg Empire and territory. Germany, besides suffering the humiliation of losing the war, also had the revolution and various uprisings. The only difference is that there more or less ethnically homogeneous and managed to keep the country together.
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  252.  @zidan1hao917  Armor and other heavy equipment is often more a liability than an asset when you are an insurgency conducting an asymmetric warfare campaign.
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  253.  @JammKhon  Funny, I don't see that written anywhere in the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, or Bill of Rights... I guess we took a wrong turn or two right around 1861.
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  254.  @ChernobylPizza  Not with the people it mattered, the industrialists and the workers. And after a certain point it didn't matter what anyone thought because of the Gestapo and the SA.
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  255.  @JammKhon  Well, thats not really germane to the topic at hand. The State when it is allowed to have the power to take not only property, but also power, will take in ever increasing amounts because that is what bureaucracies, like organism, do. Until you wake up one morning and the state has come for you or your property. You might find this far fetched as an American, but so did Germans, Russians, etc. etc. So the dividing line isn't might, its the social contract of a society. How much authority do you give a government and how much freedom do you give up. Yes that often gets settled by might, by violence or simply by politicians consistently promising "free stuff" to voters, but that only comes after the lines are drawn.
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  256.  @JammKhon  The Rule of Law.
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  257.  @edvard8449  Authoritarianism isn't interchangeable with socialism, the former is a requirement for the later. The State has to have the ability to coerce the individual to act against their own best interests for the good of the majority, or just The State. Otherwise people will ignore it and just do what they want. Regulation or even promotion and support private business is not socialism, that is just governance. Socialism is when the government controls economic activity, either directly by owning the business (soviets) or by making them captive and dependent upon government funding and permission to operate (Nazis, most western countries today to degree).
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  258. Funny but, com'on TIK silly posters are just part of the game.
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  259.  @antoniovillanueva308  lolz
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  260. Spain never really mobilized for war. This was partially from the cultural shock in the aftermath of the civil war, but also because Franco and the generals never really ginned up the populace and economy for it. Spanish companies built hundreds of thousands of small arms for the French in WWI. Of course they were doing so with capital (paid) by Allied financial interests. I donno where they would have gotten the money from, and they had no industry to build motor transport, much less armor and aircraft, but the Spanish could have easily stood up an infantry corps to take Gibraltar and Morrocco and Algeria. Especially if they had help from the Germans. The Vichy French were not a factor. Hitler could have ceeded N. Africa to Spain and threatened to burn Paris if the French complained about it. With Gibralter secured, the British would find it very hard to support Egypt with supplies and interdict Italian, German, and now Spanish shipping. If Spain joined the Axis, more Latin American countries might have remained neutral or even kept trade open. Probably wouldn't have changed the outcome any but would have made the butcher's bill higher.
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  261. The average casual socialist doesn't care or think of that. They only care about what is in their short-term best interest. What benefits or freebie programs are they promised. What "sounds good", save the whatever , the rich should pay to help the whatever etc. . They don't care if it consolidates power in the handful of elites, and that it erodes their rights and freedoms, up until the point where they bump in to the wall of their socialist cage, but then its too late.
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  262.  @cccpredarmy  Clearly you don't recognize a joke when you see one.
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  263. I'm still waiting for him to animate his maps down to the squad level. ;)
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  264. They are making the common mistake of using and comparing contemporary socialism, not even Soviet late-stage socialism, with the context of the 20s and 30s where Marxist class socialism and nationalistic socialism were only two in a whole rogues gallery in competition to be the revolutionary ideology that takes over da whirled! .
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  265. But Micheal is still awesome!
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  266.    Strange how the Liberal Democracies were able to defeat the Bolsheviks and International Communism without resorting to invading and murdering millions...
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  267.  @QuizmasterLaw  Stupidly dishonest? or Dishonestly stupid? Some throw this criticism as a roundabout wahtabout defense of fascism. The truth is that the invasion of Poland was a fait accompli, that the Western Allies could do nothing about it. Even if militarily they "might" have been able to snuff Nazi Germany out by launching a retaliatory offensive from France, that absolutely was not possible from a domestic political perspective. And doing anything against the Soviets coming in and taking their slice of the Polish pie (to which they had at least a valid legal claim), was even further from practical other than strongly worded letters.
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  268. Enemy of my enemy and all that... Remember we have the historical hindsight and cultural conditioning to say, "Nazis were baaaaad. WTF were you thinking?" That was not so clear at the time, especially early on when they threw their lot in with the side that seemed to be winning.
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  269. Never underestimate the power of stupid people to be stupid.
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  270. "Command Panzers" were probably Sd.Kfz. 265 Panzerbefehlswagen, wee little Panzer I tanks with a raised superstructure instead of a turret for the CO to be able to get around on the battlefield as well as his armor. By '42 the Pz IIs had been relegated to the divisional reconnaissance companies with the armored cars where they soldier on until the end of the war even though they were increasingly vulnerable. Source: https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-institute/csi-books/scouts_out.pdf
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  271.  @thegloriouspyrocheems2277  Could have been but in '42 there weren't very many made so they probably had all sorts of "Befehlswagens" running around.
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  272. There would not have been much for the Germans to transport up the Volga, except maybe fuel from Azerbaijan if they captured it. Its quite out of the way from Germany. Everything on the Caspian was Allied controlled. Its likely that the Germans would face attacks by assorted Soviet and even Royal Navy assets if they had taken Astrakhan.
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  273. But they tend to be.
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  274. Liberal as in the adjective not the political party. Is "progressive" better for you? I have yet to meet a conservative (adjective or noun) socialist, although these days most people who say they are "consevative" believe pretty liberal (even socialist) things...
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  275. Around 1965.
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  276.  Marry Christmas  Trump was hardly "a Hitler", not even a Mussolini or a Stalin. He is on his way out of office so you can let your brain breath a little.
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  277. Hans-Joachim Bierwirth You think socialists don't see people as commodities and resources? Racism (us vs. "them") is a facet of human nature not of any particular religion or political philosophy, nice straw man.
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  278. Some Random Name: Socialism is the evolution of liberalism. Correlation is not causation.
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  279. @ ajsimo222; Except that was not the mentality of that time period. There idea of what "benevolent" meant was VERY different from its meaning today. Look at the wording of the charters for the Conquistadors. Or the Muslim Conquest. Or the Mongol Invasion. Or the Roman Empire. Etc. Etc. Nazi Germany, "socialist" or not, was hardly an aberration in human history. There is always some a-hole who is willing to rape, pillage, and plunder in the name of whatever god or philosophy he believes in, esp, if he gets to do lots of the before mentioned rape, pillage, n' plunder.
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  280. Karim Wilmotte "And so, Thyssen, Krup, Siemens... all of them were extreme collectivist..." As long as the Marks kept rolling in and the executives got to keep their wealth and privilege. They were rolled into Nazi Germany's flavor of totalitarian socialistic control over society. Just because Hitler''s addled feral variant didn't line up with Marx's vision (any more than Stalin's or Mao's did) does not mean it did not belong in the same category.
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  281. Human beings have an amazing ability to rationalize almost anything, abhorrent or not. We have and continue to murder millions of unborn children as a matter of routine convenience for example.
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  282. No because you are reading/judging their actions based upon your own morality and sensibilities. Not everyone, actually very few in the 19th century were missionaries. By the 1700s it was all business. Perhaps you are thinking of the the 16th or 17th centuries?
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  283. That is naive. Ponder the other half of the post you just quoted from.
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  284.  @nikitanosov8159  No what he did was take a comment out of context and tried to mansplain' an irrelevant point about how great he thinks socialism and the USSR was.
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  285.  @nikitanosov8159  Try reading entire posts.
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  286.  @nikitanosov8159  Maybe English isn't your strong suit? Read original post that started this thread. Then read my post (which is a add on to that joke) then read ol' Peter's misunderstand and diatribe on the greatness of the USSR and how misunderstood he is.
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  287.  @nikitanosov8159  Yeah no. Millions of Soviet citizens starved to death in the decades BEFORE the Germans invaded the USSR. Thru a combination of mismanagement and incompetence and intentional political malice to weaken those who were resisting sovietization. The US never did and never would do what the Stalinists did. Not even to the hostile native peoples. It was/is a ridiculous analogy. The famine in India was because of a combination of factors, from a bad harvest and floods, to the lack of shipping, to the necessities of war time. Not an intentional act. Again, an idiotic analogy. It wasn't "well anyone woulda done that in those circumstances." No. That is a completely false statement. It was an event that could only occur because of the stupidity of socialism.
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  288.  @nikitanosov8159  Think more (or at least read more real history) and type less.
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  289.  @nikitanosov8159  Also nice answer when the question is ridiculous.
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  290.  @nikitanosov8159  Thats not what "ad hominem" means. I don't think anyone but the most assinine nazi revisionist would deny that the Germans pillaged the shit out of every territory they occupied. That was not brought up by anyone but your friend Peter. Someone from S. Russia ought to know the history and not just be an apologist for a delusional communist poster.
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  291. @Calvin KIRKPATRICK tldr. Just like socialism, you're too late.
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  292. Several of the Allies didn't have much choice in the matter. But thanks for playing.
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  293.  @Realkeepa-et9vo  Context matters. He was commenting on the book quote that references Keynesian economic theory.
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  294. Fascism and communism are diametrically opposed ideologies. The former is complete centralized control, the later is completely diffused control. You meant socialism.
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  295. I agree with your thesis. Given the circumstances, the British should have won the battle, mistakes and all, just on sheer weight of manpower and logistics. Rommel's dash was the only way he could have broken the offensive with an inferior force. Some battles you just can't win.
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  296.  @bernardobiritiki  That is called "corporatocracy" . And yes the distinction between a state and a corporate organization would lose all meaning. You can even think of a socialistic state as a very large conglomerate corporation that is recognized as sovereign by other nation-states over the territory it owns.
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  297.  @kubli365  In England and the US, pre-Churchill and FDR respectively.
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  298. If one of your greatest advocates is also one of your greatest critics, you know your ideology has serious flaws.
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  299. Well, they were the bad guys....
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  300.  @Swift-mr5zi  That was my impression as well.
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  301.  @smokey2628  Gaaaa! No. Feudalism is the privatization of the public interest. Everything that we consider a government function today, was the personal property of a special class, either the nobility or the religion's priests. Everything and everyone is the property not of The State, but of the king, delegated thru his followers. The complete antithesis of socialism. Socialism does not function to serve the workers but notionally to provide socio-economic equality, although in reality all it does is concentrates assets in the hands of the top of the bureaucracy, instead of the rich. The workers just get to be equally poor. The Nazi's nationalist-socialism absolutely did not serve the German people. It functioned to control the people and means of production for the benefit of the before mentioned bureaucracy.
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  302. But how would the subaltern reading it to his squadies huddled around in that cold desert morning?
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  303.  @geoeconomics3067  That the people of the USSR were able to accomplish anything at all while under the yoke of socialism is a testament to them, not to their government. Strangely technology seems to have continued to advance after 1992, so your theory appears to be incorrect.
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  304.  @infantjones  Should I really bother arguing with someone who can't figure out how to use the reply button on a web site? Your assertions are ridiculous and not based on fact. One: reactive armor was developed successfully by Israel and "borrowed" by the Soviets. Failing to invent something first doesn't matter. Two: The liquid fueled rocket was invented by Robert Goddard. A theoretical book about space is not an invention. Russian rocketry wouldn't exist at all without the German development they got pre and post WWII. Nice try. Most of the others were developments on basic research done around the world not just in the USSR, and had no broad application until they were commercialized in the West. As I said, refuting your claims is child's play. I was going to save you the embarrassment, but since you insist on being an idiot...
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  305.  Wulf  Saving his little African empire would probably be "payment in kind". @Johny, The Germans really didn't have a practical atomic program. They had run off or killed all the smart people who could have done it.
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  306. sigh...
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  307. The Japanese miscalculated that the US either wouldn't be willing to fully mobilize for a trans-pacific war, or would be so focused on the European war, that it would ignore the Pacific until Japan had resolved the Chinese campaign and built up a impenetrable island "defense in depth". We all know how well that turned out.
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  308. boo... boring. everyone knows how it ends already. ;)
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  309. Don TIK tilting the windmills of socialism again...
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  310. @25:45 "lost opportunities".... What you hinted at with your "what ifing", the German command became fixated upon reaching geographical objectives, Stalingrad, the Volga, etc. and lost sight of fighting the bewegungkrieg with the Soviet armies that were before them, and more ominously surrounding them. If they had taken the time to defeat the scattered Soviets in detail, much of the following tragedy might have been avoided.
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  311.  @Vitross  I didn't say static warfare. And it wasn't at this stage of the battle. Other than the Soviet units that were in the Stalingrad defensive belts, both armies were in the field. Paulus et. al strategy became centered on maneuvering to objectives, instead of maneuvering to encircle and destroy enemy formations. So in his haste to "just get there" he was the one who wound up enveloped.
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  312. Pretty much. Also trying to stop the Red Army drive into Germany itself.
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  313. The Finns were part of the Axis club but didn't get the jacket. If they (and the Romanians) had stuck it out to the bitter end of the war, they would probably be remembered as "part of the Axis".
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  314.  @mikefay5698  So you're the kind of person who think the side of the apple that they can see is the only part that exists?
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  315.  @mikefay5698  Do you know what the biggest cost to any business is? Labor. You know, paying the proletariat. So after paying for materials, facilities, the cost of borrowing money ( you know "Capitalism"), and paying off the real parasites, The State's taxes, the real sliver of a bit of apple is what is left to the owners of the company. So take your pills.
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  316.  @mikefay5698  Thats not how it works. That isn't even how democratic capitalism is supposed to work because per capita GDP and spending power, and thus macro economic power is greater when the "proletariat" has disposable/investment income. The reason why we don't is because the system has been rigged to not just favor the "bourgeoisie" (I like using Marx's silly old terms too), but by the politicians and apparatchiks of The State, who, for their own benefit (accumulation of power), are maximizing the defects of capitalism (concentration of wealth) while minimizing its benefits (hamstringing innovation with regulation). Socialism isn't the answer either because that just concentrates wealth and power in the hands of those who control The State. Different but the same kind of authoritarianism.
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  317.  @mikefay5698  is economically illiterate.
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  318.  @mikefay5698  And you can ask them also about Socialism and how that works out. It doesn't. No matter how many times it has been tried, it always fails when collectivism moves beyond the small-scale commune. All you are expressing is envy of the wealthy, which is typical of socialists. Probably because you are bitter about what you have (not) done with your life.
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  319. Anti-Sem1tic sentiment like this was common in Europe at this time, even a given. We today (well... most people) really can't get into the headspace of how they thought back then. So its not really inexplicable for Marx to have this world view, and for it to influence his philosophy. So, no, he wasn't euphemizing about jouknowwhos as capitalists, what he was doing was using them as an ad hominem for the bourgeoisie capitalists, since they were the ones who would be the main group to overcome in the socialist revolution. So it was handy to paint capitalists as jouknowwhos, since they were a common scapegoat in Europe and I'm sure it warmed his heart to do so.
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  320.  @ivanmartinez-jd8gi  IDK. Societies put up monuments to those who it values. And those values change over time. Many of the people we've been taught to hold up as heroes were just flawed people like the rest of us, and some of them were legit monsters who just happened to be on the side that wrote the history. I personally don't care much about them, as the statues and the wording of the plaques that go with them reflect more about the time they were erected than of the person it refers to. To me they are mostly just art that birds can crap on. ;+) I don't think they should be damaged/destroyed though, and definitely not torn down by mobs of ignorant morons.
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  321.  @ivanmartinez-jd8gi  Which is why I don't think that we should be leaving the decision of who's statue to keep should be in the hands of a militant few. The revisionism and out of context judgement isn't childish or an accident. It is a very intentional desire to undermine the established institutions and cultural assumptions of society in order to bring about... "the revolution", or otherwise make things "better", even though usually they just make things worse. Now you understand how statues and other artifacts of antiquity are often found defaced or damaged. This is nothing new.
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  322. I think you ought to have animated each individual tank and dismount in the same style as you used in the Fort Eben Emael video. ;D
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  323. Crusader... ... .... ...
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  324. Uh... @2:57 The decision that AG North had to stay in Courland and got cut off and trapped wasn't a rational one and one that Hitler made against the advice of his generals who could see it coming but AH's ego and delusions wouldn't permit it.
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  325. Not necessarily if you assume the British would contest the move into the Arabian Peninsula. Mussolini might have been under illusions of grandeur that he could take Egypt, but Hitler was under no such delusion, mainly because he wanted to invade Russia instead.
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  326. Nein. The Dash was a classic envelopment maneuver. It was the only way he had to leverage his inferior forces to threaten the entire Allied advance and the only way he had to influence the outcome. That it didn't work does not diminish its tactical soundness.
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  327.  @L24-h8i  Depends. If Rommel had been able to get more units moving sooner, having German armor and troops marauding around at the frontier and in British deep rear areas might have broken more than just Cunningham's nerve and forced them to react to being "encircled" and break off the Tobruk relief. Which is what Rommel wanted them to do. The funny thing is that, if you read other sources, its the very same communications lag and command paralysis that allowed Rommel to make his dash, also made it fail because the British didn't react before Rommel ran out of supplies and time.
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  328. Its like watching a different production of a play you've seen before. Its always a little different.
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  329. The outcome really was never in question, in hindsight. The Allies simply possessed enough resources to win, even without the atomic bomb. But it (the entire 20th century of war and conflict) pretty much was the worst nightmare humanity has inflicted upon itself. So far.
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  330. The Afrika Korps itself would not have made a difference, but the logistical effort to support it, especially the large amount of it that wound up at the bottom of the Med, would have. The Germans were never going to win because the US had an atomic ace card. About all they could have done is rid the world of Stalin.
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  331.  @jerry2357  The German's wouldn't have needed captured British trucks in N. Africa if they... weren't in N. Africa. Even captured equipment needs fuel, oils, tires, drivers, and all the stuff that they are supposed to be moving, that could have been used elsewhere. What Italy would have done if Hitler had refused to come the rescue is an interesting one. However the German contribution and costs to Italian campaigns was far higher than the Italian contributions to German ones. Its not likely that Italy would bow out of the war just because Mussolini lost his African adventure. It took llooking like the Axis were going to lose and the Allies being on the doorstep of the boot before they tossed Bennie out. And Husky and might not have succeeded at all if the hundreds of thousands of Italians (and Germans) lost in N. Africa were there waiting for those green Americans.
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  332.  @jerry2357  tens in '41 vs. hundreds of thousands in '43. You can't send troops to a territory you don't possess and can't invade. The Brits were very likely to completely over-run all of Italian N. Africa in short order if it weren't for the intervention of Hitler. This is very unlikely to make Italy quit unless it precipitated a coup that deposes Mussolini. But that could have happened at any time.
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  333. The video that pushed a thousand buttons. lol Contemporary socialists and just ordinary statist refuse to admit their kinship to the ugly side of their political philosophy.
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  334.  Soturian  Its a song. Go search for it on YT.
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  335. They are probably not all specifically Courland campaign pics, but generic Easter Front photos.
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  336. Or Native Americans from either continent.
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  337.  @ChevyChase301  and EVERY is also a blatantly false statement. A perspective that you don't agree with isn't a lie. Because the Confederacy failed and was incorporated back into the US, its perspective influences what we perceive as the historical narrative.
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  338.  @Bama_Law  My comment supports your argument, although in a way you don't want to think about. By today's standards everyone WAS racist, in that they just assumed things, like their people were better and others weren't. It wasn't the self-conscious racism of today, it was just taken as a truism. That is why you don't see any literature on it. Its also why that racism and its institutions are taken out of context today. This wasn't restricted to black vs white either, Irish, Italians, also got their turn in the barrel . The only difference is that within a generation they became indistinguisable from "Good English" folk.
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  339. TIK picks the homely Hurricane to troll the Spitfire fanboies.
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  340.  @kmcd1000  There were more Hurricanes than Spits. But that wasn't the point.
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  341.  @Randisides  You are thinking only of the resources the Germans chose to devote to the BoB that failed. Not what they would have needed to do to succeed.
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  342.  @scottwillie6389  Uh no. Unless you mean Mel Brook's "Little Piece" History of the World Hitler skit.
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  343.  @roberthansen5727  The Sea Lion you know was, but not the one that would have been planned if the Germans had been serious.
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  344. @3:44 What are those tanks? Captured T-somethings? @9:40 The last line of the that page sums up the entire German problem with the Russian campaign.
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  345. Which might have left three German divisions, all the resources that got wasted in N. Africa (not to mention Rommel), mebe even a bunch of Italian troops free for Barbarossa. The take the Caucuses and then Egypt from the East instead of the West a year later.
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  346. Maybe you should read my entire post and hold your bias?
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  347. Those 3 divisions aren't as important as the logistical resources they used up over 3 years.
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  348. The Afrika Corps were undersupplied because their supply lines were interdicted by the RN & RAF and because the majority of resources were going towards Barbarossa. What did get allocated to N. Africa was not insignificant. Remember this wasn't just a corp then army group amongst many, but it had all of the sundries of an entire theater, an air force, logistical and administrative overhead, etc. Plus you have all of the Italian men and material that were lost because they didn't have any adult supervision either... I'm not sure what the rest of your post means. The British defeated the Afrika Korp as fast as it could (faster than they should have according to TIK ;P). By '43 the writing was on the wall (in hindsight, not at the time). The Axis on the defensive in both the Med and Eastern Front, pretty much because Hitler squandered his initial advantage spreading his forces and resources across too many campaigns (BoB, N. Africa, Russia, and assorted occupations), and the US and USSR were bringing their industrial and manpower advantage to bear. Had Hitler told Mussolini "Tough luck on that Africa thing." and contented himself with shutting down the Suez Canal and only contesting sea/air control of the Med itself, its very likely that the history of later half of WWII would be much different. And involve much more radiation...
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  349. We are playing "what if" here. Did you read my entire reply or just the first paragraph? The Germans had very little impact on the timing of the Allied invasion of W. Europe. That depended upon the US's entry into the war and how fast they could build up the necessary forces. The Brits did not have the resources or capacity to do it alone, even without the N. African campaign. However if the Germans had managed to take the Caucuses and Moscow when they still had the tactical advantage, the Soviets would have been in a much worse situation and Germany might have been in a much better position to resist in the West. But, yes, the story always ends with Berlin being destroyed, be it by nukes or the hard way with bombs and Red Army tanks.
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  350. Strangely, I don't see TIK as a "tank guy" (to ah... stick too) in the same fashion as Nick Moran ("The Chieftain"). More a high-level strategic military historian that likes to dig down into the mud and guts of the tactical level. As such, his departures into socio-econmics is relevant to the topic, and his sorties against the popular group-think are what makes TIK's work an interesting perspective.
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  351. A bit of retconning by not only historians but Hitler himself. Its much more likely that he was making it up as he went and just took advantage of events as they unfolded. Blind squeirrels, stopped clocks, etc. He/they then rationalized it after the fact.
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  352. Both K and TIK could have/should have used that context in making their argument (counter arguement?).
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  353.  @Usammityduzntafraidofanythin  Context. Poland was founded parliamentary democracy and one of the first European country to grant women's suffrage. When power was seized it was because of internal and external crisis. It was intended to revert to elected government, but the Germans put an end to that.
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  354.  @TheImperatorKnight  YT Age restriction. Probably a good call. I knew what was coming in this one from the title so I shooed my 8yr. old out of the room.
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  355. Naw. "Crazy dumb-ass" is close enough to right for Hitler for me. You don't have to convince all the people that your stupid ideas/goals are "right" or "true", only enough of them to control the rest that its in their own interests, either power, financial, or even just survival.
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  356. Go look at what the rest of the Red Army was up to during this time period. The broader strategic picture will put Courland into perspective.
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  357.  @JammKhon  They can however getting along just fine with an authoritarian as long as they don't get in the way of profits.
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  358.  @JRobbySh  Mr. Buckley was wise.
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  359.  @JammKhon  I'm going to assume this was sarcasm, because I think history speaks clearer than anything I could write.
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  360. No. It was a meaningless distraction of Axis resources when they needed them the most (Eastern Front).
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  361.  @LongNightsInOffice  Because it is meddling with economic activity and forces by banks and government for its own political and financial benefit (hello moral hazard) to correct a problem of its own creation, market instability brought on by fiat currency inflation and other accounting shenanigans.
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  362.  @TheImperatorKnight  bring back the creepy lego guys!
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  363.  @calebr908  Speaking of armchair historians..
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  364. Apparently finding generals who can win in a given situation IS how you win wars. I think a lot of you (TIK included) are judging Churchill based entirely upon hindsight and your contemporary political sensibilities...
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  365. Its easy for us, 70 yrs hence, to point out "well, you should have done this or that", and easy to pick out voices from that era who support that contention. But you have to consider the context of the moment and how decisions were made with imperfect information and competing/conflicting goals. Or even simply personalities. Churchill was an antagonistic controversial figure, I leave it to your imagination to see how opinion of him is coloured by today's politics.
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  366. Or vice versa. The Germans won many short term tactical victories but they were doomed at the strategic long term level.
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  367. Likewise I am indifferent. I don't make a judgement. Churchill, like every historical figure, like every person every day, had to make decisions. Sometimes they were right, sometimes they were wrong but they made the decision and that shaped the flow of events. Mostly I'm just being the contrarian since it seems in vogue to pick on ol' Winston. ;)
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  368.  @abc68130  By that definition capitalism is socialism because public corporations are collectively owned by their shareholders. A more accurate description of all three is State (government) control (via direct or indirect ownership) of the means of production, the bureaucracy of which is most definitely not the collective Marx and Engles envisaged. Communism is the the collective control of the means of production by its stakeholders without an State.
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  369.  @TheImperatorKnight  Only in the sense that you've got to call them/it/there something and have an interface with the outside Others. In hypothetical, full-unicorn anarchic-communism, there is no state and no ownership, only decentralized collectives for specific purposes. As we have seen, you can't get there from socialism. The trip from capitalism is shorter.
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  370.  @abc68130  The Nazis extended their control over the economy well before the war. It was all a part of their.... wait for it... socialist agenda to rebuild Germany after the collapse of the Weimar Republic and during the Great Depression. https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/nazi-germany/the-nazis-and-the-german-economy/
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  371.  @abc68130  Sigh... Please read the link...
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  372.  @abc68130  Try reading the entire page. Its a high level overview of pre-war German government policy and economic intervention where the Nazi party intertwined itself and controlled markets and capital, both in money and labor. It wasn't the Soviet socialism you are trying to think it should be to be considered "socialism". Companies got to keep their names and of course the rich got to keep their money, but it was still the party that called all the shots.
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  373.  @abc68130  government intervention in its economy is pretty much the basis of socialism. If you are going to continue to be obtuse I am disinclined to continue humoring you.
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  374.  @abc68130 Ah! I see what your problem is, you don't know the difference between socialism and communism. Please go do some reading and come back when you figure it out. This is not a 101 level class.
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  375. Lets see... Stalin was quite resistant to the notion of a German betrayal, so he might well have bought just about any excuse for a Turkish invasion, like... they were opening up a Eastern front against the English Mid-East to squeeze the N. African campaign (which, would not have been a lie). Heck, Stalin might have even wanted to redo the "Polish partnership", and grab a chunk of Eastern Anatolia. Remember the Russians and Turks were/are regional rivals and in no way friends. Stalin would have much preferred the Germans to control the Bosporus. But that was never really in Hitler's strategic vision. To his way of thinking he probably considered Turkey to still be the immovable Ottoman stone of all of the European history he and his generals knew. But they really should have pressured the Turks to come in on the Axis side more. It would have opened up all kinds of strategic options without the costs of outright invading them.
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  376. If by "proletariat" you mean The State, which functions very much like a large corporation complete with hierarchies of power.
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  377. Pretty much. Especially after its success and break thru that put the Germans on the retreat. When they realized that they could just keep pushing them back, the goal became Berlin.
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  378.  @clicheguevara9917  The Soviets probably had a good idea of the tactical and strategic situation going into it. They probably didn't expect for Army Group Center to fall apart the way it did. They had planned for an attrition grind all the way to Berlin, but they had learned at this point to exploit opportunity and they ran with it... all the way to Berlin. As I've said elsewhere, a real peace was not possible, it had become quite clear to them that this was a war of annihilation, that Hitler quite literally intended to erase Russia from existence. The only way they would think of a cease-fire is if then needed it. The Soviets didn't need it, they had the Germans on the back foot after Kursk, and Stalin interned to keep them there. Negotiations would have been a waste of time.
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  379. That was pretty funny.
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  380. yes, it was completely fabricated to make the German public wonder if there was a "resistance" and to stress the Gestapo that maybe they had missed someone.
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  381.  @Damatis  Fascist are "left" because they want to put control of society in the hands of the government just like Marxists. Except they want their change to be retrograde, to some usually false notion of how things used to or should have been. Thus TIK's characterization of Nationalist Socialism is valid.
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  382.  @Damatis  Capitalism is an economic system, not a socio-political one. Capitalism is the means of production (economy) in private hands, regardless of political system. Democracy, feudalism, even authoritarianism (China). Where as in socialism, since you don't have private control, its all government, and thus all political. You are making the usual simplistic socialist mistake "mate".
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  383.  @Damatis  You're either high/drunk or you've handed this account off to another operator with much poorer English skills. I can't even tell what the hell you are trying to say. Can you put someone on who can write a coherent sentence please?
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  384. Yes, he is speaking of basic theoretical definitions that supports his case that Hitler and the Nazi regime were socialists and not capitalists. Criminal fraud would be a damage to one or more parties and thus not "economic socialism" per se. However imposing securities disclosure and etc. laws and regulations that influences a market would be.
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  385.  @chriszelez7970  Incorrect. Imperialism and Fascism are not mutually exclusive. Do you forget that fascist Italy had a king? Spain kinda had one. Japan had private industry, but it was controlled by the state and as typical of fascism government was dominated by the military. Imperial Japan has always been considered fascist, if for no other reason than you are known by the company you keep.
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  386. ​ @evertjan9479  made a wrong choice today.
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  387. Psssst. There are lots of other history channels that give it away. Or even... books!
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  388. It varies greatly. If you are digging trenches or filling sand bags, then yeah, you are burning a lot more energy than if you are sitting in a tank or manning a defensive position.
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  389. They didn't need to besiege Stalingrad. It had less strategic value than Leningrad. Crossing the Volga and encircling the city would have been expensive because of the sheer size of the area that would have exposed the German units to the full fury of the Soviet Army at its maximum extension. The "siege" of Stalingrad should have just been maintaining blocking position on the west bank and making the town uninhabitable with artillery.
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  390. I'm sorry we are collectively wasting many many hour (and you many more than 1) on this gibberish. It is a sad testament of our civilization.
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  391. No video release schedule survives contact with technical difficulties. ;)
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  392. Human nature never changes. Ref: 2016 and 2020 US presidential elections.
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  393. You must be new to the channel.
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  394. The Soviet intent was always to keep them bottled up and out of the way of the main strategic objective (Berlin). The defense only "worked" because the Soviets didn't try to take them. Their task was to prevent breakout by land.
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  395. ​ @LaughingSkull0808  The German forces within the pocket were still formidable. Bagramyan did not have the forces to do more than keep up a steady pressure on the German lines. If he could have taken Liepaja, he would have.
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  396. By this point I doubt many of them were still voluntarily there.
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  397. I like the the "WTF?" expression on Adam's portrait photo. I wonder if he was trying to say something with it..
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  398.  @lucas82  M1s do not have dismount phones. The speed at which an M1 can move unexpectedly and the turbine exhaust makes it an... unhealthy place to be. Plus there are enough radios that it was felt unnecessary to have one.
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  399.  @88porpoise  That was the TUSK kit. It's not built into the vehicle and its not fleet wide.
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  400. @17:45 This is why the envelopment if not besiege and capture of Moscow was the pivotal failure of the Germans in Barbarossa. The USSR inherited the Imperial Russian centralized infrastructure and transportation system. And then doubled down on it with central planning where the capitol was not only the key communications hub, but also where resources were routed thru and distributed (not just the military either). Cutting Moscow off from not only receiving resources, but in not being able to coordinate and send them out. Its very likely that national organized resistance would have collapsed as the adhoc control and logistical systems in Samara (
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  401. @mario gutierrez "Socialism literally does not want a market, the soviets didnt have a market." Communism does not want/have markets. The Soivets weren't communists. The Soviets did have markets. They had bureaus and factories that competed to provide goods and services to the state.
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  402. The bloody disaster came after Marxism.
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  403. Practically and functionally "Pure Communism" is Oppressive Government because once you leave the small scale of the voluntary commune, tyranny is required to force individuals to act against their own self interests.
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  404. Socialism still has to follow the rules of economic reality when its beyond the walls of academia. A market of one is still a market. Even if there is no profits or companies as we know them in capitalism. You still have factories and design bureaus which compete for State resources.
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  405. What is sad is that he took the time to transcribe what everyone has already heard.
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  406. You really didn't pay attention to the video did you?
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  407. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz...
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  408.  @ernstwiltmann6  AH was also ethnically Jewish as well. So... I can't recall if AH had read Marx's work on socialism directly or he got it 2nd hand. By the '20s and definitely by the 30's Marxism had fragmented into a hundred different interpretations and concepts for socialism, all completing to make their version of the revolution happen. AH's aversion to Bolshevism was because it was the biggest threat in Germany to the flavor of socialism that the group he had shacked up with had. Also why he had a hate-on for the Soviet Union. He knew that at any moment Stalin could support a coup and "popular revolution" against him.
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  409.  @ernstwiltmann6  AH was a mutt bastard and a professional hypocrite so... yeah. Or any other ism. People are funny like that. It means quite a bit when your supporters of slightly different brands of socialism are killing each other in the streets. I was speaking about the group that by happenstance AH fell in on and rose to power with. But for fate, we might never of heard of him, or he would have become the head of another party, if he were less psychotic, might have been considered one of the 20th century's great leaders.
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  410. LOL. Merry Christmas TIK.
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  411.  @JammKhon  Much blood has been spilled over those questions in the past century.
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  412. The PRC's economic model is merchantilism.
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  413.  @TA-eo2ww  I agree with your first part. Its a common mistake in the West to try to pigeon hole other cultures into familiar frames of reference, when in truth, they are doing their own thing.
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  414.  @salvino6699  Then "Mafioso" if you prefer. Sometimes the negative appellation is true.
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  415.  @salvino6699  Whats in a name. Thugs are thugs.
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  416.  @brainyskeletonofdoom7824  needs to take his own advice. https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1596&context=etd https://www.buffalo.edu/content/dam/www/nemla/NIS/XXXVI/NIS%20XXXVI%20Introduction.pdf https://libcom.org/history/migrant-partisans-internationalist-resistance-against-italian-fascism https://www.amazon.co.uk/Partisan-Diary-Womans-Italian-Resistance/dp/0199380546 and so on and so forth. History is written by the victors, but sometimes you can look around the story they tell you at the truth.
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  417.  @1commentking  is someone else who does not know what a "free market" is. Hint for the back of the class: it doesn't mean things or transactions are "free".
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  418. It was more complicated than that.
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  419.  @nottoday3817  Or he (oddball) didn't bother to actually listen to the video before heading down to spew all over the comments.
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  420. Finally!
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  421. Blah blah blah, the Eastern Front, what a million historians have done before. Get back to North Africa and the Op. Compass Battlefront series!
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  422. @Issac Arellano But the world would still be here and it might even be better.
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  423. You use the alien space bats' death ray.
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  424. Its a bot someone figured out how to inject into the YT comment database. I've been seeing it all over the place, usually on channels that deal with finance and economics. So see even the 'bots think you should "stick to tanks". lol. JKing!
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  425.  @mat_j  As opposed to your complete cognitive disconnection from reality. Doesn't your momma have a time limit set on your internet?
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  426.  @mat_j  Okay we are getting somewhere talking about crimes... So if I come across you in a dark alley and beat you down, but lose my knife, do you grab it and stab me and commit the crime of murder? Or do you passively retain your innocent virtue and allow me to kill you? This is the literal scenario in WWII and many other wars thru history. Also how most other wars are rationalized at the time, divorced from how some spoiled kid on the internet hundreds or thousands of years later will characterize their actions.
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  427. @15:00 German-USSR trade was already strong, they didn't need a direct overland connection. Of course that was trailing off as the Nazis and Soviet socialism deviated further and further from each other. Stalin wouldn't have minded at all if Hitler attacked the French. Germany had just as much of a causi-belli cases against France as Poland. Versalles, Sudetenland, etc. The German army wouldn't have been ready for France in Sept. 1940. Not enough tanks (Pz IIIs and 38Ts) and the mistakes made and learned from in Poland, would (might?) have been exploited by the French, English, and Belgians to blunt the invasion.
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  428. Mark Felton just released a video on the Liberation of Dachau in 1945 that is a good exclamation point for this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRk2FZbsMxw
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  429. ​ @derekbaker3279  doth protests too much.
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  430. @ 8:47 At the level of "statesmanship" there is no ideology. Its all Real Politiks. Just as in real life, "capitalits","communists", or whatever all of them got into bed with each other when they thought it was in their interests/advantage. @14:38 etc. This is just propaganda, ie: what we call today "Information Warfare". Soviet attempts to undermine German war efforts by sowing doubt in what they identified as vulnerable populations. They didn't target German "workers" because they were Hitler's base supporters, but intellectuals etc. were targeted because they already had leverage on a lot of them being that they were not Nazis by and large. But it was completely decoupled from what was going on at the diplomatic level. @23:10 After the betrayal of Barbarossa, Stalin would never have tolerated Nazi Germany, much less accept the loss of territory. Just as Hitler had no intention of allowing the USSR to continue to exist. Any negotiations would have been a cease-fire pause, not an end to the war. In '42 the Russians would have negotiated to get a halt to the German advance to buy themselves some time to reorganize their army. Likewise the Germans might have wanted a pause to consolidated and replenish the armies. But it might as well have been written on toilet paper for however permanent it would have been. After Kursk? Not a chance when Stalin gained the advantage. Food shortages? Starvation? He didn't care as long as it didn't hinder the offensive. Any Russian negotiations, or leaked planted rumors of negotiations, were purely to gain leverage with the Western Allies and to pressure them to provide support and to open a Western front, least they try to just let the Germans and Russians bleed each other white for a bit more.
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  431. And were dug in to ideal positions and your attacker commits a bunch of unforced errors.
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  432.  @MrPro897  When the US had a monopoly on nuclear weapons and the Western Allies were still on a total war footing.
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  433. Only "wheel spinning" because America is in socioeconomic retrograde, so Libertarianism does't sell when inequality is growing/changing as wealth is decreasing, while cultural institutions atrify and decay leading people to be attracted to the siren song of Socialism again. The majority want to be coddled by the State and are willing sacrifice their personal freedoms and rights in order to take the apparent easiest path thru life, even though time and again its been shown to end badly. Remember that the UK and Europe have lived with "democratic socialism" for longer and to greater degree than the US, and they see what has already been tried and failed there.
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  434.  @Earlybird86  You seem to be assuming a lot. You know what that makes you look like right?
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  435.  @Earlybird86  That would be incorrect. Much like your premise.
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  436. 1. The war was lost when Hitler decided to break the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, no matter how you slice it, they could never win a two front war against Ango-Americans and the Soviets. 2a. Nuclear weapons. 2b. They needed the Turks for the manpower and the shortcut to the Caucuses. Failing to get Turkey to join the Axis made Barbarossa (not to mention N. Africa) untenable. 4. The viciousness of the SS / RSHA abusing and liquidating the civilian populations in occupied areas is what created the partisan problem and let the (surviving) population to support them in their rear areas. It was a persistent problem in all areas the Germans occupied and became worse as insurgency warfare produces a "natural selection" where the smartest fighters learn how to survive and operate against the enemy.. It became acute '43 onward because they Germans were becoming desperate for front-line units (Waffen-SS) and couldn't afford to tie troops up with occupation and suppression of partisans.
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  437.  @nowthisnamestaken  And oil.
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  438.  @sorzin2289  "Portland Police Guard Grocery store dumpster" The reason they do that isn't because they are "heartless evul capitalist-dogs" its because its on their property and they have legal liability if any one those people gets injured or sick and sues (because they will). If you understood how the real world worked you would not have posted this poor example. Just because you are a loser doesn't mean the system is unfair, it just means you are a loser. But go ask anyone who has actually lived thru a socialist system if you want to know what unfair really is.
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  439.  @sorzin2289  Wow. Someone has filled your head with lot of simplistic BS. When you buy a bottle of water, you aren't buying the water, you are buying the container and convenience of not having to carry around your own container. Bottling companies do not "buy all the water" that is just stupid nonsense. Along with most of the rest of your ramblings I haven't the time or interest in debunking. Try some critical thinking instead of just believing what ever you read on activist web sites.
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  440.  @sorzin2289  Add reading comprehension to your list of things to try.
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  441.  @sorzin2289  I don't have to. You invalidated your own argument by not even paying attention to what I wrote.
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  442. @1:00 What's with the reflagged captured P-47? That looks like a pic from the German "captured technical evaluation" facility. Seeing if the class is paying attention?
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  443.  @mathewm7136  Yep.. I rather doubt that picture was taken in Latvia.
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  444. If our scale is the concentration of political power, communism is far-right, neo-liberalism (which is really republicanism) is centerish (depending on your interpretation and issue) , and fascism/socialism/stateism are all far left. Morality is an extremely unreliable measure of government control because it is rationalized and human beings can rationalize anything. What works is the Rule of Law and civil institutions that support it. Theoretically fascism, like socialism, should be highly structured, egalitarian, and stable (Sweden) because of its authoritarian nature, but its not because that tends towards totalitarianism (N. Korea).
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