Comments by "Harry Mills" (@harrymills2770) on "TIKhistory" channel.

  1.  @michelguevara151  Not everyone has time to watch the longer stuff. But if you didn't do the readings as a younger man, the longer videos are worth listening to. For me, doing the readings is much more efficient. I can't always concentrate the entire length of a video, but when I'm reading, I'm totally engaged until I put it down. You can run the video in the background while you go about your mundane daily activities, but it's easy to miss chunks. Sometimes, I queue up a video before I go to bed. But I always fall asleep before it's over, so that method requires some work getting through the stuff you slept through. The half-hour pieces are more distilled. I already knew a lot about the delusion of command economics, and that the Nazis were totalitarian. TIK brings the facts, in detail. But it's always the same thing. The political class knows what it wants and can get a lot of it by force. But things always fray at the ends. The sand slips through their fingers. Without real price-based valuation and allocation of resources, everything crumbles. This is why war is wasteful, and wasteful people need war.
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  2. Good stuff, as always. Thank you!
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  3. They're film-makers. They get a vision in their head of the spectacle they wish to present, and all thought goes to its staging and filming, without regard to historical truth. Like the nonsensical fight on the lava planet in Revenge of the Sith.
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  4. The true "left" are those who believe government should be limited. All others seek to drag us back to Divine Right of Kings, by another name.
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  5. I tend to give Putin a lot of benefit of the doubt, because I have an idea of what he was up against in 1999, and I see where Russia is now. I think he knows Bolshevism is a dead end, and I can't help but think he'd be a lot more liberal if the West weren't insane. But that does seem a bit of a hot take on Munich.
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  6. ... devastation after trying to find a non-Rommel WW2 book...
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  7. Today is Labor Day in America. I'm making 20 or 30 videos, today.
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  8.  @alcoholfree6381  Well, he was a socialist, after all, and the needs of the individual are always subordinated to the needs of the many and the ruling class that controls the Apparat.
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  9. This is what the left wants for America. They're halfway there, already, and they INSIST that the problems we see are due to "runaway capitalism!" IDIOTS! Totalitarian socialism is totalitarian socialism, no matter how it's labeled. CONTROL of everything is the exact same as OWNING everything. The only difference between "fascism" and "socialism" is in appearances. All are still required to do as the bureaucrats and technocrats say. It's still party control of the means of production.
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  10. I see it against the backdrop of centuries of European colonization around the world. The rest of Europe had already had the whole planet on lock-down by the time the Germans even became players. And it chafed German leaders long before Hitler came along. France and Germany both lusted after Alsace-Lorraine (bread basket) and the Saar Basin (iron and coal). The Germans definitely had a case in the dispute. The Saar voted to be part of Germany before WW I. France got both territories in the Treaty of Versailles. I'd say that U.S. meddling in Europe's insanity in WW I is what gave us WW II. Let the European empires die. By the time WW II came along, the writing was on the wall for the UK. The sun had set on her empire. It peaked under Victoria, but one by one, all her colonies gained their independence. We should've let Europe sort things out on its own, and been glad not to be so stupid. The French and the Germans would've made a deal neither side liked, and the war would've ended, without one American soldier spilling blood on European soil.
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  11. Screw you! Your facts can NOT withstand my preconceived notions!
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  12. By the time you're halfway in, you realize that all the glory is rather prosaic and myopic. The only drama is the guy next to you getting killed because of a bunch of assholes starting and then incompetently running a war.
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  13. "Critical thinking" = "Regurgitate your half-wit teacher's opinions."
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  14. Your first chart doesn't say if it's for 1941 or the whole war.
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  15. Hmmm. Your little difficulty with the subtitles is what I was talking about in another comment. The tireless research that goes into this product, you really oughta have a guy for your subtitles.
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  16. I took so much history that by the time I graduated in geology and then math, I was a semester or two away from a history degree. I've learned far more history since graduation than I ever did as a formal student. The 40 years outside of school outweigh the 20 years in school. I did enough to show I was capable of good scholarship, and to convince myself I'd never be a true scholar about it. Just always interested and slurping stuff up, here and there.
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  17. It's a lot like the Jesuits, who prove you wrong because you don't know every tenet of the shit they made up.
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  18.  Jim lastname  : I'd like to learn more about the effect of the partisans on the German war effort. It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that the NKVD went after the partisans. The partisans probably were perceived (rightly) as a major counter-revolutionary threat to Marxist-Leninist utopia.
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  19.  @TheImperatorKnight  You don't candy-coat history, so all the socialists hate you.
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  20.  @CroGamer002  : It's endlessly fascinating to delve into tactics and strategy of Northern Africa, but I think the North Afrika Corps was doomed, strategically, from the very start. Every battle the Axis won made them less able to win the next one. We notice the turning-point battles, like Waterloo, but it's just a matter of time until the better-supplied side eventually wins. Napoleon just would've lost somewhere else, if it hadn't been Waterloo.
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  21.  @MZONE991  Have you seen pack animals start chowing down while the prey is still alive? Have you ever seen a cat play with a mouse?
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  22.  @MZONE991  We're weak. We have holes. I'm migrating away from the notion of evil and towards more of a notion of "something good is missing, here."
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  23.  @winstonsmith8482  Germany wasn't self-sufficient, and given the behavior of its neighbor countries, it wasn't crazy to feel that lack of resources was a threat to their prosperity and security. Acting on that fact set by invading your neighbors is a dick move, though.
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  24.  @tstocker6926  Government-run education, health and media elicit submission by appealing to the individual's sense of duty. The Germanic tribes from which they descend have a strong sense of duty bred into them, with status accruing to the unselfish. The Nazis used what was best in their people to achieve the worst.
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  25.  @Cloud_Seeker  I see those as artificial distinctions. It's all the same thing, with [insert chosen societal divide] the lever used at the fulcrum of [insert bone of contention].
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  26. Intellectual honesty is rare. But not on TIK channel.
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  27. Extracting troop and armored strength online is next to impossible. I get way more straight facts from this channel than in all my years of desultory readings.
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  28. 'The differences between fascism, socialism and communism are cosmetic. They're all the same. Trade the king for a dictator. Control every aspect of the economy and society that they can or that they take an interest in.
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  29.  @str.77  So you reason from the fact of a flawed dogma that there is no God. That's a huge leap of faith or a total lack of reasoning powers and logic. Science is silent on the existence of God. There is no experiment you can design to test the hypothesis. But go ahead and be like Sam Harris in the enormous leap of faith that you have to make when you jump from poking holes in one man-made dogma to the conclusion that there is no Divine/transcendent intelligence. If you're a scientist, all you can say is "There is no proof or disproof of the existence of God." Some questions are and shall remain open for a long time to come. Be humble. Admit you don't know. Be an agnostic if you don't buy King James's idea of what God is.
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  30. I didn't ask you a question, but you destroyed one of my comments about Moscow being a rail hub and how its capture (I speculated) might swing the balance for the Germans. I don't think I ever seriously believed that it would be decisive, because - as you say - behind every defeated Soviet Army is another Soviet Army, bigger and stronger than the one before it. The Germans couldn't even get TO the Urals, let alone take on the whoop-ass already there, and growing. I was brought up on Guderian, basically believing that the crucial mistake was wasting time investing Minsk, when they should've bypassed it. But I don't think bypassing Minsk changes the fundamental equation. They still grind to a halt by or before Moscow, and from then on, it's just a matter of how fast they can bring their Guard units West over the Urals. The war ends sooner, if they're quicker. It takes a little longer if they're slower.
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  31.  @TheImperatorKnight  A PhD dissertation is basically a scholar's first foray into and proof they are capable of self-directed, active scholarship. It's "making your bones" so you can join the big boys. But there are a lot of hoops to jump through for the formal degree. A lot of course work in areas of study in which you have no interest, passion, or money coming in. Heh. My advice to you would be to not let your obligations to an employee ruin YOUR life. Yes, you want to do right by her. If you're killing yourself to do that, then the contract to which you hold yourself is a bad contract for YOU, and she should understand. You didn't come into this world to make sure everybody else has a job at any cost to yourself. If BattleStorms are all you WANT to do, that's one thing. Otherwise, maybe you could branch out and find something else useful and engaging for your partner/assistant/editor to do. I'm probably not understanding your situation, fully. I'm just in a similar relationship with a nephew, trying to maximize the mutual benefit from his working for me.
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  32. I'll go out on a limb, which is easier for a lightweight who wafts gently to the ground from any height, than for this crowd, and suggest maybe extra resources in air superiority was the right idea. Maybe they would've been better served by fuel-efficient, high-clearance, rugged, easy-to-repair lorries to move their men around. Dig in with infantry and heavy guns on defense. But in good flying weather? Go where you want and destroy all comers if you have air superiority. Use those lorries or something beefier to pull the artillery pieces around. Save all the money you put into tanks and put it into 4- and 6-wheel drive vehicles. The whole tank warfare thing makes it a constant battle to keep infantry with tanks. And you don't want your tanks to be caught out against infantry without infantry support for the tanks. But what if you're just really good at moving men and heavy guns, and focus on that. You can dig in and make little fortresses for your guns in captured territory. Properly coordinated with the air forces, with air superiority over the enemy, you can advance your men and guns rapidly in good weather, and then force the enemy to attack YOU when you're on pause and digging in deeper every minute you're at the new location. Again, if you're properly coordinated, your air can clear the immediate vicinity forward of any tank forces that aren't hunkered down. You'd be on the defense by night and in poor visibility conditions. Those conditions that work against your air also work against their ground. Less than ideal attacking conditions. Anyway, it just seems to me that it might've been more efficient to forego use of tanks, entirely. You can stick a pretty big gun on a lorry, especially if you're building the lorry for military use. Standard gun mounts built into the decks of every one of them. And as screening forces/scouts, you could have a fleet of highly efficient motorcycle units. A good dirt bike is very practical in all kinds of terrain and only burns a thimbleful of gas, compared to tanks, halftracks and big trucks.
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  33. It's still socialism if private businesses are controlled by the state. Socialists can never admit Hitler was a socialist.
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  34.  @vista1417  Romania wasn't enough and production from Romania actually dropped, if I recall. correctly. You have to understand that these are socialists trying to run an economy.
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  35. Fine work. Hopefully, you'll generate enough support to hire a team of helpers. Of course, there's no substitute for the creator going through the content at least once, and catch those times you misspoke. I've said things exactly the wrong way and not noticed until the edit. I'd like to see you hire people to help you with some of the busy work, so you could focus on the scholarship and the presentation. I'm guessing each video is close to a full day's work, and that only because you've built up and keep building up your references cited. Maybe you already have a crew helping with the visuals. If not, you should, unless it's recreational for you.
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  36. So, zero-sum thinking?
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  37.  @josephbeckett2330  It's sad that this is the definition of "left." Because the true liberal eschews government intervention in all things.
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  38. Adam was first. By this, he learned to blame Eve. Heh. Seriously, I think "Eve" probably found some herb with psychoactive properties.
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  39.  @daniels_0399  I think you're both right. It just depends on the situation. I think the high command on both sides in World War I should've all been shot. That was totally uncalled for. No general should've been able to give the order over the top without leading the charge. They spent men's lives like pennies. That was my first thought from @McSmash's comment.
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  40.  @daniels_0399  It takes 100,000 casualties to get rid of a bad one.
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  41. Go at your own pace.
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  42. TECHNICALLY, the Nazis WERE right-wing. Think about the relationship between people and government in so-called "leftist" systems. That's more like "absolute rule of kings" than anything remotely liberal. I would argue that socialism is regressive, even reactionary, trying to turn us back into serfs, obedient to the diktats of the state. In a way, her teacher is right, but she doesn't know WHY! It's because socialism is far right! That's why they twisted the language! It's not about power to the people. It's about putting socialists in place of the king. They don't want a new/balanced power arrangement between people and the government. They want to be the rulers. The rest is just window dressing!
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  43.  @davidhimmelsbach557  : Good point about batteries. Dad used to tell me that if you wanted to know how strong a country was, all you had to do was look at its sulfuric-acid production.
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  44.  @michelguevara151  : Forgotten piece of history. But there are pictures of wood-gas vehicles from the era from the USA, too. And DIY wood-gas videos are quite popular on YouTube. Just be advised that all the guys making them are the guys who loved to make truck noises pushing Tonka trucks around as kids, so they make very loud machinery. It's more satisfying to them. I think there's one with a Ford longbed conversion and an old tractor conversion. Neither one has a decent muffler on it.
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  45.  @StryderK  : I've never made a study of this topic. But yeah. When you get addicted to using force to make everything go, things tend to go badly. From farming to foreign policy, it's best to LET good things happen, and create conditions for good things. You can't make all the bad go away. But you can take up most of the space with good.
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  46. Inflation is theft.
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  47. Economics, philosophy, ... The bottom two items. But I'm not stuck on anything. The minutiae of battles is too much for me, personally, but I'd still support work that may one day bee foundational. Who knows? Do history and human progress as you see fit.
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  48. LOL! YouTube won't even let you show the swastika! How fucked-up and socialist is that?
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  49.  @C0NSTANTINUS  They're functionally the same thing. Fascists don't have to own the company, if the company must obey the state's every command, and the state decides to order everybody in your company around. Fascist versus socialist is a distinction with no real difference. Not as far as the people are concerned. But even "pure socialist" countries pick and choose what industries they out-and-out nationalize. In the USA, today, we're not socialist, but the amount of regulatory controls on big industries is damn near the same in their effect. Just look at the EV debacle taking place right now.
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  50. I'm doing this out of sequence, but it's almost more fun watching you fielding questions and criticisms, so the material is being presented as more of a debate.
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