Comments by "Harry Mills" (@harrymills2770) on "The MAIN Reason Why Germany Lost WW2 - OIL" video.
-
@joemoment-o1275 : Keepin' the troops in dry socks, alone, is a major undertaking! LOL! There is a "Patton" theory wherein the idea is to be so deep into the enemy that you can seize your supplies as needed, from an off-balance enemy, if you push forward, and will lose the initiative if you worry about supply lines. But the British were very Roman in how they devoted themselves to logistics and engineering. From fortifying Portugal, to paying gold for everything they took from a Spaniard in the peninsula, they beat Napoleon's "move fast and forage off the land" approach.
Montgomery's greatest successes were when he secured his supply and refused to proceed until he had overwhelming force. His biggest blunder was Nijmagen (sp?), where he tried to get super-aggressive. But some will still argue that it is better to take 80% casualties taking an objective with 1,000 men than it is to take 20% casualties with 500,000 men. And you look at the Japanese in Singapore, who followed that strategy and humiliated Percival.
I think "smash-and-grab" in the abstract is fine, but at some point, you have to move troops and materiel from point A to point B, and it becomes impossible, when every hand is against you in the countryside, as the Spaniards most definitely were against Napoleon. You can think of it as "supply lines," but if you turn to pillage to sustain your army, you're going to set the natives against you.
7
-
@1158supersiri : Moscow was THE main railway hub for East-West and North-South transport. If the Germans won their way to and around Moscow, they'd have gained a pretty big advantage. The Soviets would have a LOT harder time re-supplying North and South, and the Germans would've been able to attack North and South, separately, in greater force. But wherEVER the Soviets had to let off their tanks, wherEVER the German-Soviet frontier was, there were T34s coming from the East in endless waves. And I believe the Soviets succeeded in moving their industrial production East of the Urals.
To me, it's not clear if it would've made any difference. Eventually, the German assault would run out of steam, and more and better armaments would come streaming in from the East, to drive them back.
5
-
2
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
1
-
Seriously, good work! BUT I'm still not sure that they wouldn't've been MORE ready in a year or two, and maybe Chamberlain at Munich convinced them the time was right, even though it was not. If things had continued as they were, without hostilities, Germany had a big lead in planes, tanks and subs and probably would've extended that lead, because it was such a high priority for them. And if they'd extended the peace, they could've traded for and squirreled away a war stockpile. They were pretty good at keeping their buildup below the level of Allied perception. The whistle-blowers in the West would've been dismissed as war mongers.
Newt Gingrich, who was a historian before he was a politician, who made a VERY similar case for Japan. Japan was the last Asian man standing in Asia, after the Europeans colonized and put all the trade and trade routes on lock-down. The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere wasn't entirely without merit, although the Japanese practiced the concept in very brutal ways. Gingrich says that the attack on Pearl Harbor was a long-shot the Japanese were taking, because if they didn't do SOMEthing, the Americans were going to lock out the Japanese everywhere the Europeans already hadn't. So even though it was probably doomed to failure, the Japanese were looking extinction in the eye, and at least going to war had a CHANCE of turning out well for them. If they did NOTHING, the expansion of the USA into Asia looked to them like the death of Japan, for SURE.
We look back on Ghengis Khan as this great evil conqueror, but he rose to power because drought compelled steppe tribes to expand to new lands or perish. So one tribe gobbled up the next, and Ghengis, who was actually very enlightened and equal-opportunity for his time, ran his tribe as a meritocracy, rewarding performance and bravery with promotion, without regard to what tribe or nation you came from. Some of his top people were Chinese, promoted from the engineering ranks! So the biggest bad guy of all time, possibly, ran things in a more enlightened way than the position-by-birth that everybody else followed. That's why his tribe grew to be the biggest tribe of all.
Of course, having succeeded in becoming Kha Khan (Khan of Khans), he was still the leader of a tribe with too many mouths and too little grass! And it turned out that horse archers were the perfect instrument. And anything they didn't bring to the field, he didn't hesitate to adopt foreigners who DID bring it. Chinese engineers, Russian chargers... What he didn't have, he appropriated, on the basis of individual merit. Very rare for those days. Very enlightened. But also vicious, cruel and vindictive.
1
-
1