Comments by "Harry Mills" (@harrymills2770) on "Imperial War Museums" channel.

  1. It's not a very in-depth video.
    43
  2. I agree. I think he was a victim of the Peter Principle. He was a great fighting general at the divisional level (Does that mean a good colonel?), but not a good commander of generals, from what I gather. His sub-commanders tended not to like him and sabotage his plans. For all that he flew around in that spotter plane, there were some major battles fought in North Africa where he was grounded by weather, and both sides were playing a kind of stupid game of blind man's bluff.
    8
  3.  @petermalloy5360  Yes. They both kicked ass in N. Africa.
    3
  4.  @jobvanhetkaar8848  There were many factors, but air and sea superiority was a huge factor in the North African campaign. So was the quite mundane digging of latrines, and using a wooden box with a hole in the top that they covered with burlap to keep out the flies. German troops just took a dump over the next sand dunes and poisoned themselves with their own rotted feces, courtesy of the flies that were all over them and their food. I think Monty cost lives by being too cautious most of the time. You're wasting manpower and materiel if you just wait until you have overwhelming forces. Those are resources that could swing battles, elsewhere, but he wanted to protect his percentage of troop losses. If you can get there sooner, it might cost you 50% losses on 10,000 men, which is less costly than 5% losses on a quarter of a million men. Rommel was clearly overstretched, when he failed to capture Tobruk, it should've been over, but the Germans weren't done.
    3
  5. @@Brunel1859 ... or the thrust towards Moscow weakened the march to the oil fields in the Caucasus, which was the real prize, the main ingredient of true German independence.
    2
  6. @@Brunel1859 At any one time, there were far fewer trucks in service and often times insufficient fuel to power them. Most of their supplies were brought in horse wagons.
    2
  7.  @Liopleurodon  There were other factors. Once the invasion began, secrecy was ended, and if they'd started earlier, there was no guarantee of good weather. If they started in March/April/May and then were stopped by rain and mud, they would lose their advantage.
    2
  8. You overlook prior centuries of colonialism. What about Commodore Perry's White Fleet sailing (and steaming) into Tokyo Harbor and telling the Japanese "Trade with us, or else." Japan was the last man standing in Asia. Many in Asia LIKED the idea of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, until they realized what Japan actually meant by it. The Japanese had ZERO respect for the conquered. What they did was definitely terrible, but it's exactly what they expected from others if THEY were conquered. Newt Gingrich wrote a book on this period of history. I picked up some Cliff Notes on it, so to speak, and the Japanese saw the same kind of colonial oppression to be visited on them by America in the future that the British, Portuguese and others visited on Asia before that. Memories of the Opium Wars were still fresh throughout Asia, and after Perry said "Trade or die," they were galvanized into a crash campaign to modernize and fight back. I think the Japanese saw themselves becoming powerless vassals of the USA if they did nothing, and even though they were rightly skeptical of their chances in a confrontation with the USA, it was either fight back or lose their autonomy and identity. With their tradition of no quarter for the enemy amongst themSELVES and a strong "death before dishonor" ethos, Pearl Harbor sneak attack was seen as their best - albeit slim - hope of remaining independent and preserving their nation and culture. What I'm seeing from this video is the traditional, 70-year-old version of events. Japan DEFinitely had territorial and imperial ambitions, but they were not wrong in seeing the USA and European Allies as imperialist aggressors. But as the Nazis did in Europe and parts East, their contempt and abuse of conquered peoples and lands was in many respects their undoing. If they had ruled more "gently," they may've found will allies in Asia. But they just didn't/couldn't think that way, after centuries of "death before dishonor." "We beat you. You're still alive. Why are you still alive? You obviously have no honor. There's nothing we might do to you that you don't deserve." They committed innumerable atrocities, but they expected the same kind of atrocities should THEY be conquered, because to them, the defeated have no rights. "You lost. Just slit your belly and be done with it."
    2
  9. the Nazis weren't very motorized.
    1
  10.  @silversurfer640  His generals got a lot of stuff wrong. They blamed Hitler for everything they got wrong, and captured German generals basically wrote the history, and made themselves look as good as possible. A lot of this we didn't know until the fall of the U$$R and the release of many documents that made liars out of the German generals the allies used to write history.
    1