Comments by "Winston Smith" (@kryts27) on "Knowledgia" channel.

  1. Rome started as a small city state in central Italy under the thumb of the Etruscan kings. At the time you would not think that Rome could amount to much. It later provided the modern Latin alphabet (among many things), which we are essentially using now, and which was originally derived from a Western Greek script.
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  2. As a non-German whom ardently admires German classical music from the eighteenth and nineteenth century and also admires German intellectualism, philosophy and science from the same period, I have to wholeheartedly agree. The German poet (and polymath) Goethe said that the German people are destined for a Faustian pact; in one breast beats the heart of the angel and in the other the heart of the devil. This is not his exact words, but the schizophrenic sentiment was correct. It was a long way for Germany to fall from it's Enlightenment highs of the nineteenth century, but from the demagogue failed artist and totalitarian dictator from Linz Austria, fall it did and to unprecedented lows of brutality and nihilism for an otherwise admired and cultured people.
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  3. If the last words of this video was by Wilhelm II, then his predictions about the Nazi regime were prophetic. Wilhelm was a conservative and somewhat a militarist (even for his times as sovereign) whom increasingly sidelined the careful diplomacy of Bismarck in his early reign. I don't know very much about this monarch (i don't personally hold with feudalism or relics of it, but at that time, the majority of European states were ruled by a monarchy), but some obstinate youthful decisions of Wilhelm put him into the warpath of rival states, particularly the British Empire, which might have remained neutral (during World War 1) had Wilhelm not had an obsession about building up a navy to rival Britain's. To say Wilhelm was solely responsible for the debacle of the German defeat is taking things too far, but the German military government at home under wartime conditions was responsible for screwing down living conditions for the average German (along with the effects of the British naval blockade) until the point that Germany (or German Empire at that time whom Wilhelm was emperor of) was very close to a Soviet style revolution in late 1918 and throughout 1919. Wilhelm also substantially lost power in the last 2 years of the war when the Prussian cabal of commanding officers increasingly took over the reigns of government and strategic direction of the German army of what had become a dreadful total war and sidelined Wilhelm from political decision making, particularly under Hindenburg and Ludendorff.
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  4. I know for a fact that a lot of Scandinavian viewers (Danes, Norwegians and Swedes) will vehemently disagree with about 700 years of their history compressed into about 10 minutes of narrative.
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  5. Strangely missed the Norman invasion and conversion by William I, less than a century later after Eadgar was king of the English.
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