Comments by "Winston Smith" (@kryts27) on "The People Profiles" channel.

  1. Von Ribbentrop was a social climber and oppertunist. It was these combinations or flaws in his character, plus his political naivety and slavish devotion to Hitler, that propelled him down the path of chief Nazi diplomat (and internal enemy of the wily Admiral Canaris of the republican spy agency, the Abwehr, that Ribbentrop constantly fought for control over). Ribbentrop had a choice to stay out of politics and comfortably remain in his wife's business of selling wine, but his amibition drove him into dark places, that he did not have the wisdom or intelligence to back out of (in the early phases). Although, Albert Speer was as politically implicated in his actions as armament minister as Ribbentrop by using slave labour from concentration camps and working them to death, Speer later escaped the hangman's noose by his much better crafted line of defence than Rippentrop. In my opinion, in his capacity as armaments minister using forced labour under dellberate appalling conditions (that Speer would have known about) and his closeness to Hitler, Speer deserved to be hanged as much as Ribbentrop was for his nefarious actions, but justice does not always get her man.
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  2. I still get the sense that Hirohito orchestrated and organized a totalitarian militaristic state, along the lines of Bushidoism, and got away with the after effects of defeat and national disgrace. At the very least he should have been required to abdicate to his younger son (now Emperor Naruhito). Partly, this was at the connivance of that egregious idiot, Douglas McArthur and his hand-picked SCAP staffers, to ease the transition of a foreign constitution onto Japan. I have no doubt that Hirohito was in control of the national and military situation, at most times when Japan was at war (officially and unofficially) and that the cabal of naval and army officers, who met with the Emperor (often informally), got their marching orders from Hirohito. The nonsense about him being a passive observer being bullied into decisions by forceful & charismatic officers is just a smokescreen. Hirohito was in uniform for most of WW2, and was very firm in his intensions and orders and determined and interested in the progress of the war; this flies in the face of passivity. That the army and navy were mostly at loggerheads throughout the war, was not an intended instrument of Hirohito, but instead of the intense rivalry for the attention of the Emperor. Again, Hirohito was active in the matter of national polity and wartime strategy, as a king would. Very lucky to literally keep his head (unlike Charles I for less) after those multiple genocidal events across Asia (adding very much to the burden of crimes against humanity by the Axis powers) and totalitarian control and defeat in the heavily bombed homeland.
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  3. Von Braun's technical rocketry expertise and organising skills undoubtedly greatly contributed to the US Space Race in the 1960s, but it would not have happened had the Soviets had an equally brilliant rocket engineer at the helm of the Soviet space race; Sergei Korolev and were ahead of the Americans in this regard, in the early 1960s. Von Braun probably never met his space race rival Korolev, or even knew his name, as the Soviet government was extremely secretive about the identity of their rocket engineers. Cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin got the televised accolades and Soviet parades, but it was Korolev's work that got him into space.
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  4. Werner Von Braun was in charge of the manufacturing of A4 or V2 liquid fuelled ballistic missiles in bomb-proof mines in the Alps, by slave labour, some were Jews. People forceably working there died from overwork, brutal treatment by guards and malnutrition. Impossible that Von Braun did not know about that,
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  5. Early rocketry was a dangerous experimental practise. Rocket fuels are unstable; corrosive, cryogenic burn hazards, and are highly explosive. Many lethal accidents thus occurred.
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  6. Keitel was a rubber-stamp functionary for a rapricious dictator. He, and Alfred Jodl, thus prostituted their military professionalism to the extremist, racialist, inhumane and quasi-imperial (across Europe) cause and ideals of National Socialism. Keitel (in his earlier days) always had a choice to refuse the dubious position of chief of OKW, but ambition and a brainless wheedling obedience to a superior (whether higher officer or crazed head of state), lead to his disgrace and downfall.
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