Comments by "Fredinno" (@innosam123) on "The Armchair Historian" channel.

@strangelyukrainian7314 Except there were plenty of people in the CCP who thought intervention in Korea was dumb. The CCP was still fighting nationalist remnants in the mainland, and the party’s rule over China was not yet secure. In any case, the border on the Yalu River and the mountains of North Korea is still a pretty good defensive barrier to any attack North. A well-entrenched Chinese force would make any advance into China proper hell. It was perfectly reasonable to assume the Chinese would let North Korea fall. Mao, however, was not a reasonable man.
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@rikk319 The issue was not stupidity, but simply the fact Germany did not have the resources available. When people complain about German offensives lacking fuel, they tend to act as if Germany could get more fuel, when in reality, they couldn’t. It wasn’t an oversight, it was Germany facing the harsh realities of the war. Germany’s only decent source of oil was Romania, and even that was small compared to Texas or Baku. Mass production of spares and equipment would have made things worse- specialized ‘wunderwaffe’ actually saved more fuel in relative proportion to their individual destructive power (except maybe the V-2).
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@strangelyukrainian7314 1. We don’t know his own personal motives for wanting to nuke China other than for military reasons. 2. The Soviets lacked the ability to seriously threaten the US with nukes yet, with the US having far more nukes- and in any case, relations between the CCP and the Soviets were always somewhat tense. 3. He advocated nuking the sparsely-populated border regions, lowering civilian casualties (unlike their usage against Japan in WW2. Not sure how people justify that while saying McArthur was insane for suggesting its use in Korea for similar reasons, against tactical (not strategic) targets.)
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Hitler DID allow retreats. Not all the time (like Budapest), which were declared ‘fortress cities’, but other examples, like the Courland and East Prussia Pockets, were actually evacuated (partially.) Also, the fact that the Germans did not retreat from the Atlantic French ports probably bought the Germans a couple months on the Western Front by making Allied resupply from the sea difficult, forcing them to slow down.
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@commenter4190 The Italians also believed they’d get much of Anatolia, and got an occupation zone in Southern Anatolia as a ‘colony’. The issue is that the Italians refused to help Greece take down Ataturk because they were so exhausted from the war. If they didn’t, the non-minority parts of Turkey likely would have been partitioned between Greece and Turkey, which wasn’t a bad prize in addition to Istria and Tyrol.
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@alphabravodelta42 Eh, kind of. Stalin never let go of his grip on the Army more than he needed to to let them win the war. He was still a paranoid son of a bitch.
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@veasnatdm4861 Only if you’re crazy. (Though, TBF, Mao was…) You don’t nuke nuclear powers if you want to keep alive. MAD did not exist yet. No one had guarantees on Korea sans China, who could do nothing about the nuking of Korea beyond what they were already doing (intervention in Korea.) There is no line that’s being crossed that wasn’t crossed with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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@rwilson1197 Cowards for not fighting a last stand against an enemy that had annihilated their forces? The French tried that during the Franco-Prussian War, and all that happened was the starvation and siege of Paris.
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I like how Churchill kept trying to invade the Balkans.
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@lenonchalant1372 Because he was worried the Nazis would just occupy Vichy France, like they ended up doing.
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@somerandomdavid6775 Yes, it would, but China was still recovering from the Civil War. Intervention in Korea also ended any possibility of taking over Taiwan (even if the 7th Fleet left the Taiwan Straits), as the best troops the CCP had were used up in the fighting in Korea. My point is that there were arguably other, more important priorities for China than propping up a fellow communist regime that even the Soviet Union was hesitant at getting behind because it had some defensive benefits. It’s like when the Soviets invaded Poland proper in 1920.
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@dr.vonslifeinvesting6485 True, but even when he failed (like Operation Compass), he could come back stronger than before. Luck played a part, but so did skill and adaptability. Leadership also involves finding, motivating, coordinating, and operating with the people beneath you. Everyone depends on the people below them to succeed. Eg. Part of the reason Napoleon lost at Waterloo was the failures of the military command below him.
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@longyu9336 The US didn’t grant Vietnam freedom because they would have to force France to give up its claims to Vietnam. Not granting freedom here basically meant letting the French todo what they wanted.
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They did make a video on the Nazi economy. Note that the German economy was under so much stress due to moving to a war economy. They faced similar challenges in WW1. So this is not so much incompetence as was inevitable/intentional to do what they were trying to do.
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Note that the Yugoslav Monarchists were generally Serb Nationalists and would likely have torn the nation into further civil war had they won. Hence, Churchill likely lacked a real alternative.
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@joshuafrimpong244 Also, note that moving into Germany means that France moves away from the prepared defences on the Maginot. Also, the Allies wanted to minimize casualties in any possible war, as France had limited manpower. Hence, the focus on defence and lack of offensive moves. A mass offensive into Germany, especially if they can’t take strong defensive positions on the Rhine and entrench themselves in time, could easily backfire spectacularly once the Germans return to the Western Front.
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Heil Donitz!
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Macron basically let the West African nations set up the Eco… only for it to turn out that none of those nations liked each other enough to trust a common currency…😂
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Said Kakese Dibinga 1962, not 1994.
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@redbug7082 If South Korea was conquered by North Korea, they’d just all be ruled by Fat Boy Kim. South Korea wasn’t ‘good’, but it certainly was the better horse to ride on.
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@Lex Bright Raven They didn’t, but sitting around wasn’t going to get them much fuel either. The German offensive was also quite successful until Operation Uranus (as much caused by insubordination by Halder, who refused to send sufficient reinforcements to the Don flanks).
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Mark Dierking You just describes literally every power-hungry wannabe/actual authoritarian. You do realize that’s not just Hitler, right?
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Gammaraytrey TBF, there was no way the European COULD colonize Africa and keep it from falling apart into a mess once they left, as even though they divided states horribly, tribes in Africa are so Balkanized to effectively draw borders that could respect their wishes. Yes, the European exacerbated issues when they brought nationalism and modern weaponry, which was turned on other Africans once the colonizers left. These, however, were inevitable to be imported on the path to development and modernization.
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